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AS THE HAGU 



Journal of 
A Russian Prisoner's Wife in Japan 



Illustrated 




NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1907 



11 o^ 



!BRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Reecfved 




/TJA^i^ 



COPY B. 



riKi t tm- iia l 




Copyright, 1907, 

BY 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



Published Aprils igoj 



THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS, 
RAHWAY, N. J. 



TO 
EMILY E. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEI 


L 








page 


I. 


Europe 1 


II. 


America .... 








9 


III. 


Japajst .... 








. 19 


IV. 


Matsuyama^ the Pine-Clad ] 


iiLL 






. 36 


V. 


The Barracks Hospital 








48 


VI. 


The Red Cross of Japaist 








. 54 


VII. 


The Doyo 








64 


VIII. 


The "RfrikV Men 








76 


IX. 


The Czarevitch 








84 


X. 


My Japanese Home 








93 


XI. 


After Liaoyang's Battle 








100 


XII. 


The September Moon 








111 


XIII. 


The Liagyang Men 








122 


XIV. 


The Shaho Men 








180 


XV. 


In Kaki Time 








139 


XVI. 


"La VEmi: Anglaise" 








156 


XVII. 


"La Belle Canadienne" 








161 


XVIII. 


Lovers" Meeting 








170 


XIX. 


The Foreigner Kwannon 








175 


XX. 


In Kiku Time 








184 


XXI. 


A Happy New Year — for Japan . 






190 


XXII. 


All is Lost — Even Honour 






195 


XXIII. 


"Great Sovereign, Forgive !" 






202 




V 











VI 

CHAPTER 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 

XXXV. 

XXXVI. 

XXXVII. 

XXXVIII. 

XXXIX. 

XL. 

XLI. 

XLII. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

"Kings in Exile" 210 

Dark Days 217 

From Port Arthur 224 

The Course of True Love not Smooth in 
Japan . 232 

Daily Life 239 

The Exiled Student .... 247 

The Night Lodgers 256 

The Dull Routine 263 

The Finding of Tosaburo . . . 269 

A Little Victory 277 

Mukden's Despair . . . . • . 287 

The Happy Day ..... 594 

At Home — Colonel and Mrs. Vladimir 
von Theill 302 

Love Laughs at Prison Bars . . .311 

The Russian Armada . . . .317 

Two Futures 323 

"Peace! Peace!" . . . . .330 

After the War 338 

Sayonara! 352 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

They Put All the Officers Out ik One 

Common Ward for Three Days . . Frontispiece 

PAGE 

The Hill was Crowned with One of Those Fantas- 
tic Japanese Chateaux . . . . .36 

"I Did Not Expect Them to Feed and Fan Me, Put a 

Cigarette in My Mouth and Light it for Me" . 134 

A Prisoners' Orchestra . . . . . .160 

One Artillery Officer Brought His Little Daughter 316 

At General Fock's Headquarters, Nagoya . . 333 

Each has an Archbishop's Palace, Landscape Gar- 
den, AND Tennis Court ..... 336 

Looking Toward the Inland Sea, from Castle Terrace 343 



THE HAGUE 1899 

CONVENTION WITH RESPECT TO THE LAWS AND 
CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND 

Annex: Section 1— Belligerents. 
Chapter II— Prisoners of War. 

Article VII. The Government into whose 
hands prisoners of war have fallen is bound to 
maintain them. 

Failing a special agreement between the bel- 
ligerents, prisoners of war shall be treated as 
regards food, quarters and clothing, on the 
same footing as the troops of the Government 
which has captured them. 



AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 



CHAPTER I 
EUROPE 

Thursday, June 16th. 
♦" I ''HE blow so long dreaded has at last fallen, 
-*■ and, after crouching away from it for 
weeks, it is almost a relief from the long tension of 
emotion and fear to have had it happen — to know 
the worst. 

It was not the unexpected either; since, from 
that day of awful shame and stupefaction, when 
every one turned his eyes away from his friend's 
gaze in humiliation at the defeat of our army at 
the Yalu River, and its flight from the yellow 
hordes — since then, we women at home have had 
our minds filled with the worst presentiments. 

Vladimir, while out on a scouting expedition 
with a few Cossacks, has been captured and taken 
to a prison in Japan ! 

That was a strange enterprise surely, for a staff 
colonel, the diplomatic adviser and legal aide, 
whose presence at headquarters was solely to make 



2 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

rulings in international law and draft the treaty, 
— strange for him to be off on a scouting trip. 
Had they no young Cossack officers for such 
work ? 

I was wakened early by Anna drawing the cur- 
tains noisily and throwing the strong daylight in 
my face. Evidently the telegraph messenger had 
given her an idea of the contents of the official 
message he brought, for with great excitement she 
said : "It is news from Manchuria. Oh ! read it 
quick, barina." 

I only thought of death or wounds, and could 
scarcely tear the paper apart to read : "Prisoner — 
healthy. Write Matsuyama, Japan — ^Vladimir." 

My heart leaped and stopped beating, all my life 
currents seemed streaming out from my cold fin- 
ger tips, and I could not think. Slowly the words, 
as I stared at them, brought their full meaning to 
me. As if present before me, I saw Vladimir led 
along a road by soldiers, a cord tied to his clasped 
hands as I had often seen convicts led through the 
streets in Japan — vividly I saw the disconsolate 
figures in faded, salmon-pink clothes, and peaked 
straw hats like their thatch roofs and fences, half 
concealing the faces. I heard the clank of fetters, 
and then I shrieked with horror, with anger, at the 
mere idea. How dare they? How dare they? 

In a fury of excitement I dressed, drank my 
coffee standing, while Anna held the tray and fol- 



EUROPE 3 

lowed me around the room, blankly, dumbly, won- 
dering. I almost ran to the A s to tell them. 

Of course I should go at once to Japan. Of that 
there was no kind of doubt. With no family, no 
children, no estates, no people or duties to hold me 
here, how could it be supposed for one moment that 
I should not go to Japan? Should I sit here in 
Petersburg, and Vladimir live in prison in Japan .f* 
Not at all. Not at all. 

I dread the Red Cross meetings, because some 
women always talk of Japan, as they do of Eng- 
land, with the view of deriding and insulting me, 
it would seem. At that last meeting, Sophia and 
Hilka Belogotrovy were discussing whether it 
would not be better to be killed outright in battle, 
than to be tortured and starved to death in a 
Japanese prison. I kept still with difficulty, and 
Sophia was malicious enough to see it, and rant 
the more for my benefit. They will not under- 
stand that there is any difference between Japan 
and China, and I long ago found it of no avail to 
try to set them right about Japan and the 
Japanese. They called me "Japonski" if I at- 
tempted to tell them anything about Japan. 
They prefer an imaginary barbarism to the highly 
civilised Japan that exists. 

This hideous war has resulted from just such 
Russian ignorance of Japan ; and then, it is cruel, 
after my long and loyal championship of Japan in 



4 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

all countries, that this blow should come to me 
from it. I can laugh now, almost to hysterics, to 
remember how I besought Vladimir to throw all 
his influence, to strain every point of mercy when 
it came to the treaty-making; to be merciful to 
the spirited, sensitive people who could not com- 
prehend what they were so madly rushing upon. 
And how I threatened to rush across and join him 
in Tokyo, when a triumphant Russia should be 
making peace terms there ! I counted upon the 
negotiation and all that occupying a long time, 
and I wanted to be there again — to see the old 
pine trees on the grey castle walls, the pink and 
white lotus in the long stretches of the castle 
moats — and to soften the hearts of the conqueror 
to the Japanese, whom I have loved so long and 
so much. And now, on what an errand I go to 
Japan ! 

At first, they thought it madness for me to 
think of going to Japan, and opposed it. "They 
will imprison you too and who knows what tor- 
tures they have in their filthy prisons. — Oh! 
They ''will make both of you work in their nasty 
rice fields," said the Princess Tilly, who was never 
clear in her mind that Japan was not a province 
of China. 

I wanted to leave that very night, but the 
trans-Siberian line was impossible because of the 
delays and the impasse at the Manchurian end, 



EUROPE 5 

and the Suez route was' not to be faced in mid- 
summer. Nicholas A explained to me quietly 

about my passport for leaving Russia, in the first 
place ; my letter of credit for funds to travel with, 
in the second place; besides the necessity of send- 
ing requests to take leave at Tsarskoe, and of the 
Grand Duchesses, and of resigning from the Red 
Cross Committees. 

All my world of Petersburg came to the station 
to see me off, with flowers, lamentations, bonbons, 
books, and cheers for my long voyage. It was 
little like that going away of the troops early in 
the year with gay promises of "On to Tokyo !" 
My "On to Tokyo" was sad enough. 

I slept and I woke, and changed carriages at 
the frontier. I slept and I woke at Berlin, and 
changed to the Ostend train, and I came into 
London one afternoon at the end of the season, 
and found such a strangeness in all its familiar 
scenes that a chill struck me. The change was in 
myself, not in London. The newsboys in the 
streets held billboards announcing: "Another 
Japanese Victory. The Russians in Retreat as 
Usual. Kuropatkin still 'luring them on !' " 
And every one grinned to read the lines. "And 
bally well they deserve all this," said a man in the 
street in my hearing. 

Barclay's rushed my credit through; I left my 
jewel box and all Vladimir's papers with them. 



6 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

and I added something for faithful Anna to my 
will at the solicitors'. Anna, who has followed my 
fortunes so faithfully for these dozen and more 
years, made no protests against this strange trip; 
and as she is German and is good in her English, 
and is unsurpassed as a courier, will be invaluable. 
I drew every rouble of credit I had in St. Peters- 
burg, by Nicholas A 's advice, for he says he 

foresees only trouble — riots and revolution ahead, 
a Reign of Terror, if the fortunes of war do not 
quickly change. All these disasters have inflamed 
the people, who now resist mobilisation, and it is 
a question if they can be kept down if any more 
troops are taken away for the front. The 
Tsarskoe crowd are furious with Kuropatkin that 
he does not land his armies in Japan. 

Now, I have only to sit still for these weeks to 
come, and think and think, while the machinery 
does the rest and takes me on and on — until I stand 
at the prison door and try to see Vladimir. I 
wonder if I shall have to sing under the window 
like Coeur de Lion's little page, to find him and 
let him know I am there ! I telegraphed of course, 
from Petersburg, and again from London, that I 
am coming, and he must know that I am now on 
my way to Japan. To Japan! the trip that we 
have so often talked of taking together ! 

How strange it will be for me to find myself 
again in Japan 1 A changed Japan, and a 



EUROPE 7 

changed Sophia Ivanovna too! I wonder if 
there will be any one there who knew me before, 
eighteen, nineteen, twenty years ago? I fear not, 
and I shall be glad to have it so. Of course the 
name is different now, and I was such a child then. 
Certainly these ten years of quiet happiness and a 
contented heart with Vladimir, have made me 
another being in another world. I wonder how 
real the past will seem ; if the horror of those days 
of revelation, disillusionment, and degradation will 
come back? if, in the same scenes, I shall see the 
bloated figure, the satyr's face of Paul before me? 
and remember again, how his hideous nature was 
revealed to me too late? how his grossness, his 
coarse pleasures, his cruelties crushed me? I 
often used to start from dreams in a cold chill of 
terror, having lived again in the dark, gloomy, 
little Tokyo house, my bruised body aching, my 
ears ringing with Paul's drunken voice. 

I could not endure to stay in Russia after that. 
Everything Russian was unpleasant to me, and 
England and my mother's kinsfolk seemed my only 
home and attachments. Then followed the winters 
abroad with my invalid uncle, the meeting with 
Vladimir, and last our happy life in Rome. In 
the first years, when Vladimir found it necessary 
to go back to Russia each summer, I used to 
wonder why I was so indifferent to Russia. Why 
I felt myself so aloof, such an outsider and spec- 



8 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

tator, really only a critic, when I was in Russia. 
Although every one was so kind to me in Peters- 
burg, the sovereigns were so gracious, and Vladi- 
mir so fortunate, I found myself caring less for, 
almost disliking the Russian life. It seemed to 
me that the whole thing was a sham, a thin veneer 
of western civilisation, a clever imitation up to a 
certain point. The government denied too much 
to the people, and the want of education in the 
masses appalled me. Vladimir has always be- 
lieved in compulsory education, in fewer prisons 
and barracks and more schoolhouses. That 
quaint old American Minister, who came to 
Madrid after Petersburg, used to say that he had 
only changed jails, as far as he could see; only 
that he as a diplomat had a little more liberty 
than the shackled people in either country. 
"What Russia needs most is more soap and spell- 
ing books ; fewer princes and more country school- 
masters ; fewer diamonds, on the bare-backed court 
ladies in Petersburg, and more broken stone on 
the country rosps." "Then, as for Spain !" he 
said, "she wants fewer priests, more soap, and 
more schoolmasters too." Pie longed to get back 
to "God's country," as he called America, "Which 
smelled neither of leather boots nor garlic." A 
droll old fellow, who quite bewitched my Vladimir, 



CHAPTER II 

AMERICA 

June 30th. 

TT seems ages to me since I left Petersburg that 
-** hot June day, and ahiiost as long since the 
hotter day that I sat and stood five weary hours 
on the docks of New York. The Americans claim 
to be a civilised people, but the difficulties they 
made us, the restrictions they laid down as to our 
landing in their free country, would disgrace 
Abyssinia or Persia. We answered innumerable 
questions on board the ship, signed papers, and 
paid an entrance fee of five roubles to gain the 
land of liberty ! What a misnomer ! It must be 
a bit of American humour, or rather a gibe 
of France, to have erected that great statue of 
Liberty Enlightening the World at the mouth of 
the harbour. Oh ! Liberty ! what crimes are com- 
mitted in thy name — in America. 

When I went through America years ago, we 
had a diplomatic privilege, a laissez-passer for the 
Customs, and all that. It was all bows, courtesy, 
effusive politeness. To-day, Anna and I are only 
two cabin passengers, — nationality, Russian; 

9 



10 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

occupation, blank; ages, forty and forty-two; 
not paupers, criminals, nor lunatics, as they 
closely inquired; not suffering with any conta- 
gious disease; possessing at least one hundred 
roubles each, — so that we shall not become a 
charge on the charitable institutions of the 
country ! 

We were alone. I had kept entirely to myself 
on the ship, and we had no one to appeal to from 
the brusque and surly officials. There was no 
cafe or waiting-room, and, with all the richly 
dressed Americans, we were driven down on the 
dock and sat there among cargo boxes to wait for 
our luggage. America did not smell of leather or 
garlic that day. Niet. Niet. How that close 
warehouse on the dock smelled of low-tide and 
horses ! Phew ! my head swims now, as I recall it. 
It was a heathen, a savage and uncivilised, a 
bureaucratical, tyrannical America I found to my 
sorrow. America quite the perfect person for- 
sooth to throw stones at poor Russia ! Certainly 
we do not treat prisoners worse in Russia than the 
Goddess of Liberty treats the arriving sea pas- 
senger in America. 

So, we sat on boxes of merchandise "in the foul 
etape," as their writers always speak of Sibe- 
rian prisons. We were hungry, without food or 
drink, and could not pass the cordon of guards 
to seek it outside; and Anna stood for two hours 



AMERICA 11 

in the queue of convicts waiting to draw a number 
for a customs officer to search our luggage. 
Heavens ! how much better they do it in Wirballen 
and Ejdtkunen on our frontier! and at Odessa! 
Constantinople even would blush to have such a 
douane. 

In the long hours on this ill-smelling, stifling 
wharf, the passengers greedily seized the news- 
papers, and again their laughter was for Russia's 
misfortunes in war. Nothing was lacking to make 
me completely miserable. But, at last, an official 
came toward me with a letter, followed by a man 
who was plainly a Russian from the toes of his 
boots to his blonde-white hair. "Lady, are you 
Mrs. Van Till? because this man from the Russian 
Consulate has been hunting you all over the 
docks." And then our troubles ended, for the 
Consul's clerk knew how to manage the dreadful 
Americans. I don't know how much he had to pay 
in fees and tips to get us off ; but anyhow, he soon 
had our boxes corded and sealed, and we crossed 
by a ferry to the city, and went to a mammoth 
hotel — a skyscraper, they call it. From my win- 
dows on the fifteenth floor, I looked out to other 
fifteen- and twenty-story buildings in every direc- 
tion. The sea breeze blew in my face and there 
was no sound from the street far below. 

The Consul came and dined with me. He had 
been cabled his instructions from Petersburg, and 



12 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

had sent his man to meet me; and he had taken 
passage for me on a fast ship, which was to cross 
the Pacific in twelve days ! Think of that ! after 
the twenty-eight days we spent in crossing to San 
Francisco, such a Httle while ago. 

The war has given the Consul much work to do 
and keeps him in town, and even the Embassy is 
tied fast at the capital for the summer. The news- 
papers in New York were full of praises of Japan, 
and the same absurd stories about Russia that 
always fill English newspapers. It is still a 
mystery why the American people have so sud- 
denly forgotten the long traditional friendship 
between our two countries, and the gratitude they 
owed us, turned from us, and lost their heads so 
completely over the Japanese. It is a sort of 
insanity just now, and ever since the Japanese 
have won a victory over that silly ZakarofF on the 
Yalu River, the Americans seem to think Japan 
has conquered all creation, for all time. One must 
wait until events bring them to their senses; and 
make them quite ashamed of themselves too, I 
should think. 

When I came to leave New York, a company of 
seventy Chinese was marched into the station, 
counted off like convicts, and locked into a car. 
"This is the land of freedom, you know," said the 
Consul, "where they do not punish the Jews, no 
matter what they do. These Chinese are rich 



AMERICA IS 

merchants going to China and intending to return 
to America. They count them, lock them up, 
and guard them, exactly as we do convicts going 
to Siberia. Some day, the Chinese may get tired 
of their treatment and make an uprising. Then 
the Americans will 'get busy,' as they say, and 
mend their manners." 

I should think so, for the great republic is by 
no means the paradise we hear about in Europe. 
One encounter with pure Liberty will do for me. 
I long to meet again certain Americans who have 
made me blush for poor Russia. I shall make 
any one's salon a battle ground, if I can but meet 
again some of the American critics who taunted 
me in Rome. And that M. Georges Kennan ! Ah ! 

The consul bade me good-bye as to one setting 
sail for the unknown. I felt like M. Andre start- 
ing on his air-ship. "We cannot send word ahead, 
or do any more for you now. Your own tact and 
sense must direct you. Go at once to the French 
Minister in Tokyo, and he will do what he can. 
Drop Russian speech from this hour ; and, as your 
name is so German, and your maid has West- 
phalia printed on her face, you can go without 
suspicion. But remember, there are always spies 
and informers about and you must be discreet. 
God be with you." And then I lost all touch with 
all Russia, and really embarked for the unknown. 

On shipboard, while we were crossing the At- 



14 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Ian tic, I had written fully to every one and 
warned each one to be careful of what he put in 
letters to me. In New York, Anna washed every 
European sign and hotel label from our boxes. 
The four days on the train went by very quickly, 
and we saw a rich, contented, prosperous country 
day after day. Only once on the far western 
plains did we see a soldier in uniform, a suggestion 
of war; but there were bulletins at the railway 
stations, and every one grinned at fresh discom- 
fitures and defeats for Russia. The passengers on 
the ship were few and uninteresting; it was cold 
and foggy ; and I spent the time in my deck cabin, 
and tried to picture the landing in Japan. 

'<c>' "^^ ^;> '^^ 

Tuesday, July 19th. 
It was a hot, steamy, rainy morning when we 
anchored at Yokohama, and we quickly went 
ashore to the hotel and asked for rooms. I wrote 
my name with hesitation in the visitors' book, the 
innkeeper said: "This way, Madame," turned into 
a little room, and closed the door. In alarm, I felt 
that Japanese fetters were about to be put upon 
me, when he lifted his hand and said: "Oh! the 
Princess Sophia ! Princess Sophia ! My God ! 
What are you doing here, Madame la Princesse.f* 
Go back to the ship. Quick! Quick! It is too 
dangerous, too dangerous. You cannot spy here. 



AMERICA 15 

Go quick. I cannot let you stop. ^\ cannot go 
with you. It is too dangerous." As he clasped 

his hands again, I recognised D 's old steward, 

one who came to my rescue many times in my 
Tokyo days, and once really saved my life, when 
Paul was more drunk and more brutal than usual. 
This steward at the Legation house was the only 
one to whom I could appeal and speak openly, and 

I always suspected that he was told off by D 

to keep an eye on the No. 2 house, and to save me, 

if necessary. It was this faithful M who 

concealed Paul's many disappearances ; who found 
him drowned in the villa lakelet in the distant 
quarter across the river ; and who closed my house 
for me, and got me away from Japan. All of 
that past life came before me in successive scenes, 
like a panorama. I stood quite speechless with all 

that the sudden appearance of M brought 

before me. 

M now owns the large foreign hotel, and, 

sending Anna into the breakfast room, he himself 
served me in a private room, as the boy passed in 
the dishes. All my troubles were truly ended. 
Ministers and consuls could not advise nor do more 

for me than this faithful M , who knew every 

link in the long diplomatic chain of events leading 
up to the war's beginning. He had seen the 
Rosens and Princess Kitty go away; and he had 
watched the flag hauled down from the Consulate. 



16 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

He knew, too, all about the arrangements with the 
French Legation in Tokyo. 

That good soul took me to the bank and got me 
money on my London letter. "Keep your English 
notes and gold," he advised, "for we cannot know 
what may happen. Keep enough of them always 
with you to pay to get you away, if you have to 
escape suddenly from Japan." He took me to 
Tokyo, and we saw the French Minister, who at 
last gave me word of Vladimir, but — how terrible. 
"He is on the hospital list, you see," he said, show- 
ing me the paper. "He arrived from Dalny only a 
week ago, and the Consul in Kobe came back from 
Matsuyama the day before yesterday, and sends 
me these reports. He has without doubt seen 
him, and after a few days you might go to Kobe 
and see the Consul !" 

"After a few days ! Mon Dieu! No ! at once, 
to-day, by my same steamer ! It goes to Kobe." 

"But, Madame, I have not any permit for you 
to see your husband yet. You must apply for it." 

"But, your Excellency, I do not need any permit 
to see your Consul. He has seen my husband. He 
can tell me of him. Ah ! how could I wait here an 
hour.f* No! No! It is cruel to stop me now. 
Let me go to Kobe and wait there. It is nearer. 
Let me go." 

The Minister drew his shoulders a little, and 
then had me write an appeal to the Minister of 



AMERICA 17 

War to be permitted to visit my husband in the 
hospital of the prisoners' quarters at Matsuyama, 
and that I might be permitted also to take up my 
residence at Matsuyama, and have frequent access 
to the hospital. "They will grant it. Oh, yes. 
I am quite sure of it. Be quite tranquil," he said. 

All this took time, and we drove rapidly back 
to the station, past a long open park space beside 
the moat, now bare of its lotus plants, in a glare 
of light and heat insupportable. The thought of 
Vladimir, wounded and in a prison hospital, drove 
everything from my mind, and I but A^aguely re- 
member what was said and done in the Chancery, 
nor did I notice what we passed as we hastened 
for our returning train. Great buildings, as in a 
European capital, stretched along vast park 
spaces ; and I remember seeing, as if in a dream, 
as if in a mirage in the noon heat waves, the 
quaint, little, white towers perched high on the 
castle walls. 

"Look !" said M , who rode facing me. And 

there was the familiar old Legation building, with 
its loggiaed verandah, the steep, green garden, 
the rustic parasol of a summer house at the angle 
of the compound overlooking the old parade 
ground. How often did we stand there laughing 
until weak at the drill of the would-be army, the 
little manikin caricatures of European troops 
going through goose-step marches ! I cannot yet 



18 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

understand or find the clue to the miraculous 
creation of the formidable army they must really 
have in the field, when I remember the travesty of 
manoeuvres that used to take place on the Hibiya 
parade ground. Our old Legation was shuttered 
and silent, the flagstaff bare, the grille closed, and 
a policeman in a white uniform sat in a tiny sentry 
box by the momhan's house. It was a sad sight. 

Oh ! War ! War ! how cruel and unnecessary 
are the sufferings you bring in your train ! 

Oh ! Bezobrazoff ! Bezobrazoff ! What have you 
not brought down upon the hapless sovereign who 
trusted you ? And upon his innocent subj ects ! 
All Vladimir's worst forebodings, since the day 
he followed the timid Nicholas in Alexander's 
funeral train, have more than come true. To 
think that Russia, with her great destiny, should 
come to this ! — Halted in her great march to the 
Pacific by these puny people ! 



CHAPTER III 

JAPAN 

Sunday, July 24th. 

IT was late in the afternoon before we could get 
ashore at Kobe and reach the French Con- 
sulate. The tri-colour of la Republique seemed as 
dear to me as our own, as it lifted now and then 
in the faint south wind that blew up the Inland 
Sea. My own excitement must have moved the 
door-man, for he abruptly ushered me into the 
cabinet where the Consul was quietly writing at a 
desk. 

"Madame?" said the Consul, rising to bow and 
receiving my card inquiringly. But I could not 
command my voice, and at last he spoke. "Well! 
I see it is Madame von Theill, for whom M. le 
Colonel has asked at Matsuyama. I had the 
pleasure to meet him but a few days ago. He is 
improving, they say, since his arrival, and since 
he learned that you were coming from Russia. 
It is a very long journey that you have made. 
You must telegraph him now from Kobe." 

"I have, I have. But what — what — tell, tell me 
quickly the news of him, I implore you." 

19 



20 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

"Calm yourself, Madame. He is ill, he will re- 
cover. He has suffered much, but he is safely in 
the best hands now. A few wounds, some flesh 
wounds, you know. Many bandages and all that, 
but he is not in the quarter of the serious cases. 
His arm does not permit him to write, but he talks 
with much spirit, and he has begged me to charge 
myself with you when you shall have arrived in 
Kobe. 

"Oh ! Yes ! You can go to Matsuyama and 
live there near him, and they will let you visit him 
each day. But first you must have a permit from 
the Minister of War. Have you such.? No.f^ 
Then you must wait until it arrives, and in the 
meantime you can arrange for your menage in 
Matsuyama. There are no foreign hotels there, 
in fact no good tea houses. There is a little com- 
munity of American Protestant missionaries, and 
they will aid you." 

I told how M was arranging for a courier- 
boy and cook, and that my maid was a bonne 
a toute faire herself, along with her many talents, 
and I begged to go at once. 

"But, be tranquil, Madame. First, the per- 
mission. Then the steamer which will go from 
Kobe to the ports of lyo province. There will be 
one on Monday evening, and for that you must 
wait. It is only five days, and you can send a 
telegram, and get direct answer from M. le 



JAPAN SI 



Colonel. Ah! what pleasure for all those poor 
exiles to have you arrive ! It will be a day of fete 
in Matsuyama for them to see a countrywoman 



again." 



And then I dragged through long days, and 
longer nights, of suffocating heat. But, if it was 
hot for me in the foreign hotel, with all the 
accustomed comforts of Europe, what could it be 
for my poor sufferer so far away at the end of 
the Inland Sea? Each morning I went to the 
Consulate to ask if the permission had come. Each 
morning, I sent a telegram to Vladimir, bought 
more stores and supplies. After all that Vladimir 
has endured in Manchuria, and suffered since, no 
amount of luxury can atone. 

It seemed a good promise for other agrements 
of civilisation, when the Consul told me I need not 
take lamps, since they had the electric light in 
Matsuyama. It seemed hard to believe that such 
a little place on the map, away down in the prov- 
inces of Shikoku Island, could be entirely up to 
date like that. 

I was so dazed, so distracted that brief morning 
in Tokyo, that I hardly noticed Japan, — the new 
Japan- — this modern Japan that has come up like 
magic in the years of my absence. There are the 
same bare-legged coolies in mushroom hats running 
their jinrikishas as before, but they run beside 
electric trams now; and we saw more carriages 



%% AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

on the street those few hours in Tokyo than we 
used to see in a week or a month. The Japanese 
people continue to wear their own national dress 
more than I had expected they would, and the 
women still run around with their babies tied fast 
to their backs, and other babies play in the streets 
with still younger babies tied to their backs. It 
is a quaint, picturesque, charming Japan, to one 
who looks only at the tableaux of street life and 
sees no further. But each time that I see here a 
Japanese soldier in uniform, something strikes me 
stone still — my heart stops, a terrible sense of 
dread, some kind of fear overpowers me; a sick- 
ening revolt at the idea of Vladimir shot, struck, 
wounded, and dragged in triumph, as a trophy of 
war, by such another soldier as that! Oh, it is 
maddening, sickening, horrible, humiliating, im- 
possible. I never thought — no one can think— of 
these people as soldiers in the field, at war, like real 
soldiers, like the troops of a European country. 
And to be defeated by an army of these brown 
toys ! Europeans to be held prisoners, helpless, 
beyond all remotest chance of escape by such Lilli- 
putians as these ! It is too much ! War is fearful, 
war is hell indeed, as the Americans say. Many 
French people, in 1870, suffered misery and 
agonies of humiliation in being defeated and im- 
prisoned by the enemy — ^but it was not a humilia- 
tion like this. Not this. Not this. I am sure I 



JAPAN 23 

could stand it better if Vladimir were imprisoned 
anywhere else — by Germans, English, or Austri- 
ans, for they are our own race — even in Turkey, 
for the Turks are nearer to us, to me, to our 
customs, to the ways of Europe, of the West. 

Yesterday, a train of soldiers on their way to 
the front was stopped on the railway embankment 
in the midst of the foreign settlement. There was 
a soldier's head or several heads out of each win- 
dow; all were in new uniforms waving flags; and 
the streets were crowded with people waving more 
flags and cheering them — cheering them, with that 
peculiar Banzai! Banzai! Banzai! which they 
always shout with a rising note, both arms up- 
lifted, as if it were an invocation. It is as thrill- 
ing, as intense and vibrant of the martial spirit as 
the ''Auoc Armes! Aux Armes!'^ of the Marseillaise, 
and while under other conditions, in another war, 
elsewhere, it might fire me with a splendid, joyful 
enthusiasm, it deals me now blow upon blow, gives 
me shock, and sickening sense of misery. The 
cheers of a conqueror — of a triumphant people ! 
and we ! The Russians! the conquered ones ! De- 
feated by Asiatics ! 

I find myself often wondering if in a few weeks 
I shall not be in Kobe again under other circum- 
stances, cheering Russian troop-trains as they roll 
through the country and on to Tokyo ! General 
Kuropatkin has promised that he will dictate the 



M AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

terms of the treaty of peace in Tokyo, and 
Admiral Alexeieff has promised every one, for a 
year past, that he would give a New Year's ball 
in the Tokyo palace. Some sudden coup may even 
effect this. God grant it come soon ! 

But will anything ever atone to me or to Vladi- 
mir for his sufferings, and the agonies of humili- 
ation of this present situation .^^ For no matter 
how short a time it endures this Matsuyama in- 
cident in our lives is already graved and ground 
into the depths of my soul, with chagrin and 
bitterness unspeakable. 

'^vly '^^ ''O -^Qy 

Tuesday, July 26th. 

The official permit arrived. The Consul him- 
self brought it to me, and committing me to the 
charge of his assistant, embarked me on the tiny 
steamer. It was a suffocating afternoon. All the 
harbour was a grey blue, the hills were steeped in 
sodden grey and violet haze instead of shadows, 
and the very sky sulked in a dull, streaked canopy 
of weary clouds. 

The Consul and his assistant looked amazement 
at the mountain of boxes the courier was guard- 
ing. "Have you the intention of living in Matsu- 
yama forever.?" was the question. "God forbid!" 
my fervent answer. 

The Consul himself was sending down three 



JAPAN 25 

pianos, a violin, a mandolin, and many stores — tea, 
red wine, and cognac for the miserables, so that 
all the visible cargo of the vessel seemed ours. 

It was a trim modern little ship, with electric 
lights, electric bells, and boys, in the uniform and 
buttons of the European pages, to wait on one — 
and to prevent one from defiling the soft green 
velvet carpet of the salon with one's base, Euro- 
pean shoes. In the comfortable straw chairs on 
the open deck we found air to breathe, when the 
little steamer got under way through the darkness 
that fell so fast. After the long summer evenings 
of Russia I had just left, there was always some- 
thing sinister and uncanny in the early blackness 
that came upon the world of Japan, after the last 
clear beam of the sinking sun. It was always to 
me like an eclipse, or the terrible darkness that 
fell upon Pompeii at midday. We stopped in the 
night once or twice, and chattering passengers 
clattered off and on in their wooden clogs. The 
mosquitoes sang until my tiny white cabin rang 
and resounded like the box of a violin, and, at last, 
a misty, pale-pink and pearl dawn relieved me. 

It was a day of enchantment that followed, if I 
had been in a mood to let myself be enchanted. 
We floated over silver seas and between emerald 
islets. It was a daydream of delicate, exquisite 
colour, the most poetic of landscape panoramas. 
We slipped into the tiniest harbours and through 



26 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

the narrowest channels. It was Norway in minia- 
ture, the Lofotens through the other end of an 
opera glass ; but, at thought of the Lofotens, a 
lump came in mj throat and Vladimir's face swam 
before my eyes blinded with tears. Ah, Vladimir ! 
We were happy then. We did not dream of 
this. 

The sea broadened out to lakes, it narrowed to 
the merest canals, between steep shores terraced 
far up the hillside with green rice fields ; and a row 
of pine trees was silhouetted on each of the sky- 
lines of the hills, like the stiff mane of a Norwegian 
pony. Each toy town or village had its granite 
sea wall and mole, its lighthouse and harbour 
buoys — civilisation in miniature, compact, com- 
plete. White police stations showed in the thick 
of the grey-walled, black-roofed houses, and the 
gabled gateways and great sweeping roofs of tem- 
ples rose from dense groves of old pines and 
camphor trees. Heavens ! how romantically, 
theatrically, impossibly picturesque it all was ! 
Ideal Arcadia — dreamland — a world's treasury of 
scenery. And I looked on with dull eyes and a 
cool pulse, my eye mechanically registering, my 
brain automatically judging and awarding the 
degree of excellence to the scene from long habit. 
How different has been my attitude, how wild my 
enthusiasm in Norway, the Crimea, the Caucasus, 
and in dear Italy, where, with Vladimir, there was 



JAPAN n 

the advantage of seeing with four eyes instead of 
with two eyes. 

We hardly stopped before these towns of Lilh- 
put. The whistle shrieked, the engine puffed a 
great sigh and stopped, and passengers and 
cargo went over one side into sampans and came 
up the other. We whistled and went on, the sam- 
pans lurching in the sudden wake. It was all so 
admirably done, so quietly and promptly, with 
such exact cooperation, that it began to dawn 
upon me how the army of pigmies have come to 
humiliate the army of giants. In contrast with 
these tidy and remote little villages of fishermen 
and rice farmers of the Inland Sea, far from any 
foreign settlement, I recalled the muddy streets 
and tumbledown houses, the dirt, misery, and 
ignorance of our pigstyes of Russian villages, 
even quite near to Petersburg and Moscow. 
Hardly any village in China is as filthy, the people 
as ignorant and in as low a condition as in that 
Tula village of Yasnaya Polyana beside the 
country home of our great reformer and humbug, 
Count L. Tolstoi. I wonder why the procession 
of foreign visitors who go to Yasnaya Polyana, 
who lavish adulation and hysterical praises upon 
that crass socialist and mischief-maker of his day, 
never think to look around them and use their 
reasoning powers. Would it not be the logical 
thing for Yasnaya Polyana to be the model village 



m AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

of Russia? Something cleaner than Edam or 
Markem? A Httle of that magnificent humani- 
tarianism and benevolence poured upon that in- 
sanitary village on his own estates would be more 
practical, it seems to me, than the thin treacle of 
it spread over the whole universe. Talk is cheap 
in Yasnaja Polyana, and the Grand Poseur plays 
his part magnificently. Every visitor goes away 
completely hypnotised, especially the Americans 
with their frothing about equality and the uni- 
versal brotherhood of man. Universal grand- 
mother! All men are just as equal as all noses or 
mouths are equal. The world gets older but learns 
nothing; and it cherishes delusions, and the same 
ones, just as it did in the time of the Greek 
philosophers. Leo Tolstoi might well have lived in 
a tub, or carried a lantern by day, like the most 
sensational and theatrical of the ancients. He is 
only a past master of la reclame, of the art of 
advertising. The mouj'ik blouse and those delight- 
ful tableaux of a real nobleman shoemaking and 
haymaking, make his books sell. That is all. 
And, under the masquerading blouse of the 
humanitarian is the fine and perfumed linen of the 
dandy. Leo Tolstoi, the Beau Brummel of his 
corps, in my father's day — the dandy in domino 
to-day. 

''v^' -^v^ '^^ ''^' 



JAPAN 29 

July 38th. 

Alas ! I am dragging this, as that day dragged 
its hours along on that ideal summer sea. The 
Vice-Consul read, but I could not put my mind on 
print. I found myself at the foot of a page with- 
out having read it; my eye had mechanically 
traversed words while my mind was elsewhere — 
thinking, thinking, trying to picture precisely the 
situation that would meet my eye at the journey's 
end, for I could not bore my companion continu- 
ally with my questions about Matsuyama. 

At another time, what a voyage of delight that 
might have been ! Yachting on the Greek coast 
does not give one so much of pure landscape 
beauty. In one broad stretch of waters, the little 
steamer, so like a yacht, coursed head on to a green 
mountain slope, that showed at last a green fold 
in its front. There opened a channel, as we turned 
a right angle, and we entered it, passing a quaint 
little combination of lighthouse and temple 
clamped to its perpendicular rock angles. We 
swept into a channel as narrow as a river, where 
the tide raced and eddied in rapids; we swung 
around more green headlands and sharp corners, 
and came to in the fairway between two little 
towns whose black-tiled roofs ran high up the hill- 
side. Enormous temples spread their great 
masses of roof tiles amidst billows of densest 
foliage. And the activity of these little places! 



30 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Hundreds of picturesque junks and hundreds of 
schooner-rigged craft showed two stages in navi- 
gation, and flotillas of small steamers rested at 
buoys, while a dozen whistled and clanked their 
way in and out. It was diverting and so beauti- 
fully picturesque. Only then I remembered and 
thought of my camera deep down in one of my 
boxes. I had been too busy and indifferent to 
care to use it in Kobe, and it was packed with the 
film roll in it where Natalie and I had snapped 
the tableaux at our garden fete for the Red Cross 
at Tsarskoe Cercle. But at the mention of 
camera, the Vice-Consul started violently. 

"My God, Madame, a thousand times, No ! No ! 
No ! Do not ever think of a camera, much less 
dare to use it, in Japan. In this Inland Sea, all 
this beautiful landscape so ideal, these hills so 
green and smiling, all is fortified. It is crowded 
with forts and guns. All are concealed, hidden 
under these curtains of foliage, these vines and 
terraces, in fair mask of beauty, and they wish no 
one to know it. If the most innocent traveller 
points a photographic machine, they think him a 
spy who has some knowledge of their secrets. I 
warn you to never use your machine while you are 
here." 

This idea of the horrors of war, or rather of the 
engines of war that produce the horror being con- 
cealed in the midst of all this peaceful, smiling 



JAPAN 81 

beauty gave me a chill of disillusionment. I had 
been saying before that it was altogether too per- 
fect to be real, too theatrical to be useful and 
economic in common life. Now it seemed to me 
that all was false, all illusion, all painted scenery ; 
and the deceptive landscape palled upon me. I 
had no thought save how a sheet of flame and 
white smoke might puff from a green hillside and 
our tiny ship go to splinters in a second like poor 
Makaroff's. 

We went on through islands and more islands, 
and at noon came upon an astonishing sight. In 
the midst of little villages, tiny steamers, and slow- 
sailing junks, we were suddenly introduced to a 
great harbour filled with foreign ships, and ringed 
with great factories, workshops, and chimneys. 
Ten, twenty, forty, fifty ships came in sight. The 
long black ships were smoking lightly from every 
funnel; cargo was going in and out; and flotillas 
of bateaux mouche flew over the water. It was 
busy, lively, inspiring. "But what is this-f^ What 
new port do we find here.'^ This is as great a 
port as Kobe," I said. 

"It is Ujina. These are army transports 
taking supplies and troops, and guns too— as you 
can see — over to Manchuria. Even now, those 
cannon, which they are hoisting to that ship's 
side, may be going to be turned upon the brave 
men at Port Arthur." 



32 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

I groaned, half sick at the thought, and then 
was drawn to watch men in white kimonos and 
pastry-cooks' caps creeping slowly down the side 
of a white hospital ship, the Repl Cross painted on 

its funnel. "Are those? Are those " I could 

not finish the question. 

"No, no, Madame, they are only Japanese 
wounded. The launches are towing now a queue 
of hospital sampans away toward the city. They 
take their own wounded to the hospitals in 
Hiroshima, over there. The poor Russians are 
separated at the quarantine depot and sent to 
Matsuyama. The Japanese do it well, you see, 
which is merciful. They have imitated all the 
ways of Europe very cleverly." 

On the shore there were sheds and sheds in 
interminable rows, and coolies ran like files of ants 
with bales and boxes on their shoulders to drop 
them in cargo lighters. 

"Ammunition," said the Vice-Consul, pointing 
to a lighter filled with small square deal boxes. 
And the idea gave me a sickening chill. "Those 
rolls you know are rice, of course. And that is 
charcoal, so that camp fires shall not show smoke. 
And those are cavalry horses. The Cossack of 
Japan is none too well mounted, you see." And 
sorry beasts they were, tended by small jockeys in 
uniform. 

At last, we were seeing real signs of war, for in 



JAPAN. S3 

Tokyo, not a uniform, not a sentry, not a sign of 
the army had been visible, any more than in 
democratic, peaceful America. In Kobe, the 
soldier was rarely seen. He most often went past 
on railway trains at long intervals, and the war 
had seemed to me so unreal, so imaginary and 
mythical, even here in Japan, that my mind was 
strained in trying to comprehend and realise 
things. But here on the Inland Sea war was real, 
visible, tangible. There were uniforms every- 
where, and swarms of men in khaki, who were in- 
visible against the long lines of unpainted ware- 
houses and straw-covered stores. Soldiers stood 
and gaped at us from the landing stage, and 
gendarmes, with enormously long swords, paraded, 
keen-eyed, up and down the planking to see what 
they might discover, whom they might arrest. A 
military officer came down the pier, every one bow- 
ing low and saluting; his face set in an in- 
scrutable smile, his salutes automatic, his breast 
covered with medals, a great sabre clanking beside 
him. "It is a riding general," said the courier 
wisely; and the cavalry leader, with his staff, dis- 
appeared in the little green velvet salon. "He 
goes to Matsuyama to look-see the Russian 
horios. Then he goes to Tairen soon, on that ship 
over there. Her name is Tairen Maru now, but 
she used to be Russia's ship Catherine.'^ 

"Yes," said the Vice-Consul drily. "It is a 



34 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

popular tour now to go sightseeing to Matsu- 
yama, to regard there the horios, the prisoners. 
And the ship, you know it? You heard about it 
doubtless? It is the Ekaterinoslav.^^ And there 
was our huge volunteer ship, painted over with 
huge, white Japanese ideographs ! And called a 
Maru. Could anything cut one deeper than to see 
one's own ships in bondage? And the horios! the 
prisoners ! Vladimir a liorio! And the dragoons 
going over to look at the horios, as if they were 
in a Zoo ! 

"Where is this Tairen? In Korea?" I asked. 

"Tairen? Tairen? Why, it is only the Chinese 
Talien. It is De Witte's town, Dalny," said the 
Vice-Consul. "They have renamed it, too." 

In a few minutes' steaming we entered another 
bay whose shores smoked with the chimneys of 
many red brick factories. Verily, this is a new 
Japan with a vengeance. "The Naval Station, 
the arsenal of Kure," said the Vice-Consul; and 
the clatter of ship-builders' hammers filled the air. 
All this activity, all this European method and 
progress reduced me to dumb wonder and despair. 
Who had ever dreamed there was such a Japan 
hidden away in the little crannies of the Inland 
Sea? Could the Legation in Tokyo have known 
this and not warned them in Petersburg? What 
was Wogack doing? Surely, there was not such 
an Ujina and Kure here in those days when we 



JAPAN 35 

used to laugh so at Japan playing soldier before 
our windows! How often did our visitors say 
when looking on: "Do the little monkeys think 
they are ever going to have a real war, that they 
need keep up this farce of being soldiers and drill- 
ing?" And I can remember when an English 
mihtary man said the Japanese were like the 
Ghoorkas in India, the best fighting material in 

the world, that D said that "the whole httle 

Japanese army could not stand against one regi- 
ment of Cossacks, if they ever came over to 
Saghalien, with their grievances. They would 
sweep them off. Ride them down, like thatH and 

D brushed cigar ashes off a lacquer table top 

with a flip of his fingers. And now, what have our 
c dreaded Cossacks done since the war began, but 
retire? Ride away, ride fast and far from these 
wicked little yellow mites ! Brobdingnagians on 
horses fleeing from the Lilliputians on foot ! Oh ! 
shame on them! 



CHAPTER IV 

MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 

Sunday, July 31st. 
T?OR all my life I shall remember the series of 
-*- petty incidents that marked that last day of 
my long journey from Petersburg. We seemed 
to drag our way slowly across the last stretch of 
azure sea, so like a mountain-girt lake. In the end 
we came slowly toward the green Shikoku shore, 
where a round hill stood up from the rice plain, 
midway between the mountain wall and the sea. 
It was crowned with one of those fantastic 
Japanese chateaux, all white walls and black 
gabled roofs, cutting across and piled one above 
another. 

"Matsuyama !" said the Vice-Consul at its first 
appearance; and then I could not take my eyes 
from it — from the goal of my journey, which had 
reached more than half around the earth. For 
weeks and weeks only that name had been on my 
mind and in my thoughts, and at last it had be- 
come reality. I was overcome with emotion and 
excitement, with almost fear of what the crown- 
ing moment might reveal. If my gaze could only 
pierce through those faraway, fairy-like roofs and 

36 



MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 37 

walls, and see Vladimir lying there, what ease, 
what respite from my long tension of anxiety! 

"Perhaps he watches the steamer approach," I 
ventured to suggest. 

"But, no, Madame, the poor sufferers, none of 
the Russians, are up there at the chateau. They 
are in barracks on the level ground, at the left, 
quite at the foot of the hill. You cannot see the 
city yet. It is a ring city, quite surrounding the 
chateau, and we must cross three or four miles of 
rice plain by railway train. Such a railway ! The 
tiniest miniscule of a railway — a string of net- 
sukes is the train. I might hang the locomotive 
on my watch chain — a breloque merely. So droll." 

I was breathless with excitement, as we landed 
and walked up the bank to the station. I wanted 
to run, to fly to the prison, at once. The minia* 
ture train puffed in, and a populace in blue and 
white garments dismounted. I looked at them, 
and they all looked at me, especially the boy- 
vendor of cigarettes, whose stolid, bovine stare in 
my face for full ten minutes irritated me beyond 
words. Then we took our places and the train 
ran slowly and smokily toward the chateau on the 
high hill. 

•^^ -^^ '•Qy -^^ 

I shut my eyes, and held the side of the jin- 
rikisha tightly, as we coursed through a few 



38 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

streets, past a field and some bare spaces, and 
stopped at an open gate, where sentries stood 
with muskets and bandoliers. This was the first 
real soldier of the victorious army on actual 
duty that I had seen. He was a hard-faced old 
peasant in a patched and faded khaki uniform. 
The Vice-Consul presented his card and my per- 
mit, spoke amiably in Japanese, and the sentry 
grunted, "Huh!" Another old. trooper took the 
cards, fingered them, showed them to his mates at 
the guard-house door, and slowly took his bow- 
legged way across the bare earthern court to a 
row of wooden warehouses or barrack buildings. 
All was new and raw, and carpenters were at work 
on other new buildings, at which the Vice-Consul 
lifted his shoulders. "More barracks. More bar- 
racks. Mon Dieu, again more prisoners !" 

It was a strange experience to me, this standing 
outside the gates, with rustics in the road, and 
uniformed rustics within the gate, staring at me 
stolidly, woodenly, like so many ruminant cattle — 
in the same Japan where every gate used to swing 
wide open for us, every head to bend low, politely, 
respectfully, when we touched the circle of the 
government. 

"But is it possible that these people do not 
know that you are the Vice-Consul of France? 
Have you not been here before? And did we not 
telegraph the coming in advance?" 



MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 39 

"Oh, yes. But be tranquil, Madame, a little of 
patience. These are the conquerors, you know. 
And since the Oriental cannot impress us by 
making a grand tour of many apartments, we shall 
arrive at the sensation of awe by waiting in 
humility at the outer entrance." 

The bow-legged peasant in uniform returned 
towards the gate, stopped at a distance, and 
beckoned to us with his fingers to advance — quite 
as you summon a porter at a railway station. I 
was fortified then for anything that might happen 
in this changed Japan, my heart beating to suffo- 
cation, and my face burning with colour. We 
went along an endless covered piazza to the door 
of the Chancery, a bare room, where clerks with- 
out coats wrote at many wooden tables, and the 
air was that of a furnace between thin wooden 
walls scorching in the afternoon sun. A young 
Japanese ran forward, with head erect, in a bold, 
familiar manner, and took the Vice-Consul by the 
hand, to my utter amazement, and began stutter- 
ing a jargon of bad French. The Vice-Consul 
presented him. 

"Ah, the companion of one of the prisoners !" 
said the youth, who it seems is the official inter- 
preter, thrusting his hand out from where he 
stood a few paces from me. The tactful French- 
man moved forward, seized the hand, and eflTusively 
shook it a second time, and the blood that had 



iO AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

been beating in my face so fiercely, ebbed back and 
back, and a chill struck my heart. 

"She must have a permit, of course," said this 
recently uniformed sosh% staring at me with a 
sangfroid that far passed the plane of equality. 

"She has one, which the guardian at the gate 
has brought here," said my French ally. "It is 
from the Minister of War, and I have yesterday 
telegraphed explanations to the Commandant, and 
asked that, under the extreme circumstances, he 
will permit her to visit her husband immediately 
upon her arrival. Has he not informed the 
hospital .f^" 

"Ah ! perhaps. Yes, truly, he has. It is here," 
said the young autocrat, picking up the most 
prominent written sheet on his table, and with it 
my permit sent in from the gate. "She may go 
now," said the lordly one, and he almost waved us 
from his presence, but not before the Vice-Consul 
had recovered my official papers. 

"Have the goodness, please, to send some one to 
M. le Colonel to announce that Madame has 
arrived at Matsuyama and will soon come to him. 
It is not good for him to have too strong a shock," 
said my brave man of France. 

While a messenger in mule slippers went ahead, 
we followed slowly, my considerate Frenchman 
stopping now and then for a few moments, for I 
was gasping rather than breathing, a mist filled 



MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 41 

my eyes, and stumbling, I put out my other hand 
to steady myself against the walls and posts. I 
saw dimly white-robed hospital patients standing 
here and there, saluting; I toiled up a little slope 
of floor, the Vice-Consul lifted a white sheet of a 
curtain, released his arm, and dropped the white 
cloth between us. A muffled, crying sob : "Sophia ! 
Sophia 1" and I flung myself by the wooden 
hospital cot I had come so far to reach. A head, 
shapeless with a swathing of white bandages, lay 
there; and from it looked the dear, dark eyes, 
but — shadowed with such depths of unutter- 
able sadness, of woe unspeakable, the mute record 
of pain endured, and of a noble soul's humiliation, 
an agony more excruciating than any mere phys- 
ical nerve vibrations. 

-^^ii^ -"^ ''v::^ ^Qy 

Tuesday, August 2nd. 

The Vice-Consul remained two days making his 
parochial calls, as he termed it, and making my 
position for me with the Japanese authorities. 
"It is beyond all your experiences, of course/' he 
said, "but it is better that I present you formally 
at headquarters and have a precise understand- 
ing of the limits to which you must constrain 
yourself. Let it be written down now, how often 
you may visit the barracks, at what hours, and 
how long you may remain; whether you can visit 



4i2 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

other prisoners in the city ; if you can go beyond 
certain limits in your promenades on foot and in 
jinrikisha; and the same privilege for your maid. 
AlsOj let it be understood that you will wish to 
come to Kobe to replenish stores for your house- 
hold and for yourself. You will need a distrac- 
tion, if you are long restrained to this hot little 
town, and the recovery of M. le Colonel you see is 
distant." 

The military Commandant, with whom I should 
have most relations, was after the German mode. 
He had the recurved mustachios of the Kaiser, 
guttural jas and ach^s dotted his remarks, and 
when any one rapped at the door, he said "Ho !" 
in a way that should have brought a parade 
ground to salute and attention. It was agreed 
that I should visit the barracks from two until six 
o'clock each day, or Anna could go in my place 
for one hour. I could have wept with joy at this 
merciful dispensation, so far beyond all that I 
had expected. The Commandant gave me the 
addresses and prices of four houses, which I might 
rent. I had perfect liberty to move about the 
town; and apparently, the only restriction put 
upon me was that all my letters, correspondence, 
and telegrams must suffer the same censorship as 
if I were a prisoner of war. It was so liberal, just, 
and reasonable that I was not a little bewildered 
to find that nothing else was required. I was as 



MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 4S 

free as any tourist or resident had been in the old 
passport days in the interior — -as free, in fact, as 
in Russia. I could at any time obtain permits to 
visit the prisoners at the Town Hall and other 
places of detention on the two visitors' days of 
each week. 

I was at the gate of the barracks enclosure at 
the stroke of two o'clock. The heat was intense, 
the sun glaring down on the treeless spaces that 
had been cultivated fields before the rows of 
wooden barracks had been erected. I dreaded 
the familiar contempt of the young jackana.pes in 
the Chancery, but he was humility and courtesy 
itself, really Japanese after all; and he presented 
me to the chief -surgeon, a serious kindly man in 
spectacles, who was of the manner of old Japan, 
the exquisitely polite and refined Japan of the 
upper classes, of the court circle I used to know. 
I sat for a few minutes in his room while tea was 
brought and the courtesies passed between us, and 
then he went with me to Vladimir's ward. It was 
a comfort to have Vladimir in charge of such a 
man as this. 

"The Herr Colonel is my most interesting case," 
said the chief surgeon, with a smile at this very 
professional view. "I shall expect him to improve 
rapidly now that you have arrived to care for him. 
Have you had any nurse's training .P" I told him 
and Vladimir, in German, of all the serious work 



44 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

we had done in the Red Cross in Russia, for our 
soldiers at the front; of our lectures and practice 
classes, where we learned to bandage and to do 
regular hospital work. 

"Yes, yes," he said, "our Japanese ladies are 
doing the same in Tokyo. Our Empress spends 
several hours every day in nurse's dress, rolling 
bandages. She has sent several thousand rolls to 
be divided between the army and navy, and our 
grateful patients do really make miraculous prog- 
ress when their wounds are dressed with imperial 
bandages. We have to mark them to be washed 
and used, over and over again. So much can the 
mind cure." 

I met all Vladimir's immediate confreres, and 
fellow sufferers, and the head nurse and an inter- 
preter conducted me through the other wards, 
where there were Russians of every province, every 
arm of the service, every degree of rank, all suffer- 
ing from grievous wounds, all bearing their pain 
so bravely. Poor fellows ! Poor fellows ! And 
you never even saw Bezobrazoff probably, nor 
heard of his wretched old timber claims ! Yet, for 
that, you lie here and suffer, and go through life 
maimed! For Holy Russia's sake.? No. For 
BezobrazofF's schemes.? Yes. And AlexeiefF's. 
May the Japanese soon capture him! 

It seems strange that in such a few days I 
should settle down to a routine of living as natural 



MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 45 

to me as if all my life I had known Matsuyama 
and the road around the moat to the barracks. 
My furniture soon found place in my httle 
Japanese house, which looked upon the loveHest 
little jardinette I ever saw. There was a better 
house to be had, but it was far from the barracks, 
in the so-called court quarter of the town, where 
the old daimio had dwelt, and it had a yard just 
four feet wide and twenty feet long. Into that 
ribbon of land, however, were condensed all the 
features of a park — thickets, hedges, a pond, a 
rocky hillside, a bending pine and a pebbly beach. 
I have a clipped camellia hedge twenty feet high 
that shuts out other roofs and chimney tops, and 
above the shining camelha wall rises the pine-clad 
hill, with the fantastic castle gables running 
along its sky-line. 

My four lower rooms bound two sides of the 
garden, the camelha hedge a third side, and 
the fourth is an arrangement of foliage with the 
thatched roof protecting the picturesque stone 
well-curb admirably placed for effect. The 
kitchen, baths, and servants' rooms are between 
my living rooms and the street wall. I have six 
rooms on the ground floor and four rooms above — 
a spacious mansion, as Japanese homes go. All 
my upper-floor rooms can be thrown into one, by 
removing the shding fusuma, and if the papered 
lattices, or shojiy are removed I have an open 



46 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

pavilion, all three sides balconied to the air and 
only one solid back wall remaining. It is the most 
ideal of summer villas ; but, if Vladimir were only 
here in the quiet and privacy of this maisonette 
and the landscape garden ! 

We cleared out all of the soft straw mats that 
hold so much dust, dampness, and fleas, and can- 
not be walked on with our rough foreign shoes, 
and laid down instead the fine straw matting that 
is made for the European market, all through 
these Inland Sea provinces. Beside the wicker 
furniture and beds that we brought from Kobe, 
Anna found other chairs here, and a clever car- 
penter has made her a deep, luxurious sofa, over 
whose back and seat of laced ropes she has 
fastened soft mattresses. She has found the most 
artistic blue and white printed cottons for cover- 
ing her cushions and chairs ; and every day on my 
return, I am led with pride to some new creation. 
The courier, who has proved himself an universal 
genius, has worked with a zeal equal to Anna's to 
equip us for comfortable European living, and 

quotes M and his hotel as the standard and 

paragon he must satisfy. In Kobe, we rummaged 
some really good old bits out of the trash the 
curio shops are now crammed with, and, quick to 
note my special passion for painted wood doors 
and golden fusiima, the courier has sent his scouts 
out through the province to find more treasures. 



MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 47 

My little home is indeed charming, but who sees 
it? Who knows it, but myself and Anna? Vladi- 
mir asks daily about my maison bijou, and is 
amused by Anna's makeshifts and inventions. He 
warns me not to make myself too comfortable, not 
to settle down too entirely, or I may have to stay 
forever in Matsuyama. 

One of the American ladies told me about the 
camellia hedge's blooming, and I wished that I 
might see it in December covered with huge pink 
blossoms. Vladimir's eyes flashed merrily as he 
regarded me and said : "Have a care ! Have a 
care ! Strike a piece of wood, quickly, or you 
will have the luck to see it in December. God 
forbid ! Never camellia Japonica for me any 
more — never — never. You may wait here until 
December to see your tsubaki hedge bloom, but not 
I — not I. I hope to be well out of this, and have 
this flash-in-the-pan campaign over by that time. 
July ! August ! September ! October ! November ! 
December ! Six months ? No ! No ! I could not 
support life that long here — impossible. Kuro- 
patkin will have gotten on his feet by that time, 
and straightened things out. The campaign can- 
not last that long." 



CHAPTER V 

THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL 

August 5th. 

T ZLADIMIR'S eyes wore slowly away some of 
^ their sadness, and at times, when the early 
morning dressing of his wounds had been less 
painful than usual, a gaiety bubbled up from his 
heart, wit flashed with its old brilliancy, and 
humour played merrily upon even his own sad 
state. 

"Ah! Sophia! Sophia! Madame la prison- 
niere! VAccusee de Quoi! How can you lose the 
count of my mortal wounds .^^ Can you not ad- 
dress your whole mind to it and remember that I 
am wounded forty-two times ! Three perfora- 
tions, a simple and a compound fracture, and a 
bone shattering; a scapula, a tibia, a cranial 
grafting; also a torn ligament, six cicatrices, ten 
cuts, twelve stabs, some slicings and contusions, 
and last, the right knee-cap, which is my X, the 
unknown quantity. I am 'Exhibit A, Hors Con- 
courSy* for any museum or college of surgery. 
The whole faculty could hold clinics over me, each 
specialist in turn. No need for chart, manikin, 

48 



THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL 49 

or cadaver. You should call the roll and check me 
off, all my casualties and deficiencies ; put down a 
bamboo counter for every item of my disasters, as 
the coolies keep tally of their rice bags on the 
wharves. Hold up your left hand, Madame 
She-Who-Forgets, and count me over again on 
your fingers — carefully. Good ! Well done ! Re- 
peat the enumeration once again from the begin- 
ning ! Ah ! Now backwards ! The knee-cap, 
which is X, say it — say it — say it — Ah! Bien! 
you may yet win a prize." And with such non- 
sense, he cheered the hours. 

"Sophia ! Old Paul says he suffers from seven 
mortal diseases. Each one would kill him at once, 
if the lot of them did not quarrel among themselves 
as to which should have him first. So, at last, I 
am more than his rival !" 

Several times I asked him how, where, he re- 
ceived all these terrible wounds, and he turned my 
questions. He would only say that it was near 
Haicheng. 

"Ah, after a time, Sophia. After a time. Ah, 
God, do not make me think of it. It was too 
terrible. Paul there may tell you. Ask him. Ask 
Akimoff to bring his violin in here and let us have 
some music. Sing Ave Maria. He will accom- 
pany you. Oh ! what ages since I have heard your 
voice." And so he continued to put me off, to turn 
the subject; and each day I hurriedly left the 



50 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

barracks at the last moment of grace, ignorant 
still of how it had happened. 

"I will tell you, Madame," said Akimoff , when I 
went with him to inspect the kitchens. "It was at 
a conference at headquarters, and a little recon- 
naissance was wanted to develop the enemy's posi- 
tion. 'We must know if they are bearing down 
this valley road with this hill as objective,' said 
Mistschenko. 'Send some Cossacks off at once,' 
said the Chief; and at once they began consider- 
ing who should lead the scouting party. 'One 
dare-devil young lieutenant will do,' says Kuro- 
patkin, and Mistschenko names two to be sum- 
moned. But, at the end of an hour, the orderly 
returned to say that one of them could not be 
found at all. He had last gone down to the Grand 
Duke's headquarters, where there were always gay 
times at night, as at a cabaret or Bal Bulliery and 
from which they dare not summon him; and the 
other lieutenant was sick in his tent and could not 
stand on his feet. 'Ah ! pigs ! swine ! Drunk, both 
of them. Vodka and champagne will lose us the 
whole campaign, if I cannot find a way to stop this 
thing soon. Whom can we send? Who knows what 
a map looks like or calls for, and knows enough to 
bring back the right news?' 'Let me go, your 
Excellency,' said Von Theill. 'I used to be good 
at this sort of thing in Ferghana, you well know. 
Let me have an adventure again, for the fun of it, 



THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL 51 

I beg. Paul Lessar and I were talking over our 
young adventures together only last month. Let 
me renew my youth.' 

" 'You! A staff colonel! A legal councillor 
and diplomatic secretary. You ! Jead a little band 
of Cossacks to reconnoitre a hillside at night! 
Oh ! impossible ! Wake up the other lieutenants ; it 
is duty for them. Wake them all up, and I will take 
my choice. It will be good discipline for them.' 

" 'But, I beg of you, let me do it, let me do it,' 
the Colonel had urged. 'I know the map. I under- 
stand exactly what you seek to know. Get me a 
lieutenant's coat, and I am off in ten minutes. I'll 
take the pickets whose horses are ready'; and, 
truly, with his pockets crammed with biscuits, he 
was off for the twenty-mile ride down the road. 
I did not see him again until we encountered at 
Matsuyama. One wounded Cossack, found the 
next day, told that the Colonel had found the map 
wholly at fault; had ridden on and on until long 
after sunrise, before coming in touch with the 
enemy's scouts. Then turning, he rode his tired 
horses straight into an ambush of Japanese. 
They said he fought bravely, was wounded and 
unhorsed; but, bringing down a Kakamaki with 
every charge in his revolvers, he kept his sur- 
rounders at bay with his sword, until it was struck 
from his hand by the swing of a musket. Another 
blow left him senseless. When he first came to the 



52 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

hospital here, he used to wake up in the night 
screaming, having dreamed the scene over again, 
and seen the faces of the Japanese as they sur- 
rounded him, lunging with their bayonets and 
yelling like fiends. He said those faces would never 
be blotted out. Always he could see them, like the 
fiendish faces of some frightful Japanese masks 
he had once seen. If he had not resisted, you see ; 
if he had surrendered when he saw it was all up, 
it would have been much better. As it was, they 
had to hack and batter him to pieces to capture 
him at all. It was magnificent, though. No 
quarter, no surrender — and he did not yield his 
sword. Oh! but Kuropatkin was in a fury when 
the word came back. He could not blame 
Mistschenko and himself enough for letting the 
Colonel undertake such a mad enterprise, so out of 
all rank and order. They dreaded, too, what 
p£tat Major and all Petersburg would say. Did 
they tell you in Petersburg how the Commander 
himself was reprimanded for it?" 

But no, there was nothing to ask but how to get 
to Matsuyama. To flee from Petersburg to Mat- 
suyama direct was all that I had thought of in 
Russia, and the General Staff were too cut up with 
the reprimand from Tsarskoe itself to dwell on the 
thing. Count Keller told Akimoff that he would 
rather have lost a regiment, than have had the 
thing happen. 



THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL 53 

All our wounded Russians, when captured and 
taken down to the Japanese hospital at Dalny, 
were there arrayed in clean white Japanese ki- 
monos. These they wear still in the hospital 
wards, day and night. It is a dress well suited to 
this hot weather, but it is more or less becoming 
to some of our stalwart officers. Usually less so. 
Their arms and their ankles stick out too far, 
despite the extra sizes provided for the horioSy and 
it is very much more an undress than pajamas. 
I feel embarrassed when I enter the ward, but we 
are in the closest intimacy and informality here, 
and I suppose I shall become used to it. The 
officers parade up and down the corridor upon 
which their alcoves of rooms open with perfect 
ease and sangfroid, as much at home as in top- 
boots and long-skirted coats. Here they live, two 
to each alcove, free to wander in and out and visit 
each other and go to adjoining wards, when they 
are able to walk. It is not my idea of a prison 
at. all. Surely there is the fullest liberty within 
the barracks. There are no fetters, no restric- 
tions. Everything is plain to a degree; simple, 
hygienic, and clean; and when I consider and sum 
up all these things, I wonder if there is anything 
at all to complain of. The prisoners' lot could not 
well be a happier one, and I, for one, would less 
willingly be a prisoner-of-war in some places I can 
think of in Russia. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 

August 6th. 

THE little Red Cross nurses in the hospital 
are a daily wonder to me, their ability a 
revelation and a surprise. Long ago, I used to 
meet Japanese great ladies of the court circles in 
Tokyo, who spoke only Japanese, and very few 
words even in that language. A visit was chiefly 
an affair of who could make the most bows in ten 
minutes. The Japanese ladies, then in their first 
foreign clothes, were automatons only, wooden, 
stolid, impassive. Harem visits in Cospoli are a 
wild excitement, intellectual feasts, beside the 
miserable quarter-hours of my official visits in 
Tokyo. And official dinners ! Ah, me ! My 
pantomime partners and the dumb great ladies at 
the funereal dinners at the Ministries ! Only one 
thing ever saved the day, or the night, and that 
was that the menus and the wines were always irre- 
proachable ; the Japanese having a most ex- 
aggerated regard for the obligations of hospitality 
and a jealous sensitiveness lest they fall below the 

54 



THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 55 

highest European standards at a feast. They 
could command food and wine in the open market, 
but wit and liveliness, gaiety and "go" cannot be 
commanded anywhere when the chairs are filled 
with people chosen only by rank. I have suffered 
also in Rome. 

Repression and self-effacement have been 
ground into the women of the race for such un- 
counted generations, that it will take several 
generations of education to give them any social 
emancipation and courage. Even the Protestant 
missionaries in Matsuyama, English and Ameri- 
cans, who called on me as soon as I arrived, say 
that the war has already worked wonders for 
Japanese women ; that the active work of the Red 
Cross has called out the women of all classes from 
their homes ; that the men have had to confer with 
and work with them on a plane of equality, and in 
such public works the superior brains and ability 
of the women have often been conspicuous. It 
has been a wholesome experience for the men of 
Japan, and in this Red Cross Society of a million 
members, some of the old traditions are receiving 
hard blows. Under the news laws, a few Japanese 
women control their own great fortunes and ad- 
minister great estates, and their cooperation and 
leadership in Red Cross work are eagerly sought. 

The thousands of trained nurses of the Red 
Cross are for the time a part of the military estab- 



56 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

lishment, they have miHtary rank and dIscipHne, 
and through that nearly enjoy equahty with the 
men workers ; the surgeons must rely upon, confer 
with, and work with them on new lines, regarding 
them as human beings possessed of individual souls. 
Much enlightenment in this regard has come to 
Japanese men through the war, but it will take 
some generations for them to acquire the in- 
stinctive deference to women, the sense of chivalry 
which prompts European men to show considera- 
tion to women because they are women. Bushido 
is a fine moral creed and cult for the warrior, but 
women have no part in Bushido, and romantic love 
has no place in the Japanese school of chivalry. 

The Red Cross nurses had three years of hard 
training in the schools for nurses before they re- 
ceived diplomas, and had good hospital practice 
before they came here. These at the barracks 
hospital are the cheeriest, most capable little 
things I know. They never seem tired, although 
they never rest. They are never cross or im- 
patient, but always smiling, exquisitely polite. 
Even when bandaging, they make little ducks with 
their heads in lieu of bows, and say their regret- 
ful Gomen nasai (I beg your pardon) whenever 
the patient groans. In their immaculate white 
dresses, caps, and stockinged feet, they are re- 
freshment to the eye on these hot days. They are 
like children beside the huge Cossacks they care 



THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 57 

for — very precocious children, when one observes 
their skill and courage in the operating room. 
They seem to humour and charm their patients 
with indulgence, yet they are martinets in their 
precise obedience to surgeon's orders. The patient 
is never crossed, yet he always obeys too. It is 
the old, old story of the hypnotic East. The big 
Cossacks cry bitterly when their nurses are 
changed. 

Vladimir insists that only the wise, kind, cheer- 
ful chief nurse of the hospital-ship kept life, or 
hope of life in him, during the agonising days on 
the Yellow Sea. His nurse here is a little mite of 
a thing with rosy cheeks and soft sympathetic 
black eyes. Nesan, some of the officers, who had 
known Japanese tea houses, called her, and she is 
known now by no other name. I find that her 
name is O'Shige San ; that she came from Meguro 
near Tokyo, and received her nurse's diploma 
from the hands of the Empress herself at the Red 
Cross hospital in Tokyo. I find Japanese words 
and phrases coming back to me after all these 
years, as I try to talk with her. I shall begin 
studying Japanese at once again, as it will be 
helpful, and the lessons will fill the long morning 
hours, when I cannot be with Vladimir. 

I wanted to do something for O'Shige San, but 
of course I could not make her a money present, 
and as the nurses wear their white uniform in the 



58 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

hospital, and a black dress, bonnet, and military 
coat when travelling, there is no use to give her the 
pretty obis and kimonos that one usually presents 
in Japan. Vladimir suggests that I make a con- 
tribution to the Red Cross Society and to the 
Volunteer Nurses' Society, composed of Japanese 
ladies of position, who take hospital training and 
relieve the overworked Red Cross nurses. These 
volunteers wear the prescribed dress and do all of 
a nurse's daily duties, roll bandages and arrange 
supplies, meet hospital trains and ships. 

I made an appointment to call upon the Gov- 
ernor's wife, and gave her the five hundred roubles 
for the Red Cross, and five hundred for the Volun- 
teer Nurses, as a little thank-offering from a 
grateful Russian. She was very quiet and 
formally correct, and with exquisite courtesy 
accepted and thanked me, through the interpre- 
ter. She was the aristocrat, the grande dame, to 
her delicate finger-tips. She had soft, kind eyes, 
and in her calm was not so wooden as those of 
her class whom I used to meet; but there was a 
chasm between us. She, the real woman, whom I 
would like to know, was far-away, unattainable, 
close shut in the conventions as in her cool, dove- 
coloured silk kimono. Then the Governor himself 
came into the interview, and the atmosphere be- 
came more sympathetic to me. He had been in 
Russia years ago, and had kept up his study of 



THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 59 

Russian ever since. He was sorry that he did not 
feel at Hberty to go oftener to the hospital and 
the places of detention, as he should greatly enjoy 
the society of so many cultivated foreigners at 
this remote post of duty. I easily understood, 
that in time of war the civil officials must refrain 
from embarrassing or interfering with the mili- 
tary in any way. He could further any one else 
doing things for the Russians, but he must avoid 
for himself any direct attentions beyond the 
severest lines of etiquette. He begged me to come 
to him or send at once, if any need or want arose ; 
and to feel quite safe and sure that he had me in 
the especial care and keeping of his officials. He 
assured me that my little paper and bamboo house 
was guarded night and day beyond all chance of 
harm or intrusion; and he only advised that 
during the next week, when the town would be full 
of country people saying farewell to the depart- 
ing regiments, I should not go about the streets 
any more than necessary. He would be dis- 
tressed if any ignorant rustic should offer rude- 
ness to me in his prefecture. "I think all the 
Matsuyama people know you, and admire so much 
your coming this long way to care for your 
wounded husband ; but the country people are very 
ignorant, and might be impolite." 

A few days later, ladies from the two societies 
came to see me, and after the first salutations and 



60 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

the first sip of tea, there was Kfe enough in them. 
They had accepted a portion of my fund as a 
subscription for Hfe membership in both societies. 
They accepted the rest as a gift, and they brought 
me the beautifully written certificates and the 
badges to wear. They were more animated and 
alert than any Japanese ladies I had met before; 
and I found that they were the wives of Japanese 
officers who had gone to the front, wives of local 
officials, and wives of rich merchants and land- 
owners, all leading spirits and active workers in 
their missions of mercy. One of them was the 
daughter of the old daimio. Her, they men- 
tioned in awe-struck tones, but I could not dis- 
tinguish her from the half-dozen prim little 
women in shadow-, and cloud-, and mist-coloured 
silk and crape kimonos, who sat on the edges of 
my foreign chairs, with hands and fingers in the 
precise pose of Japanese good form. They made 
cordial and sympathetic speeches, full of nice 
feeling to me the stranger, who was to be as a 
guest and sister to each one. They were nice; 
they were true gentlewomen; they were sincere, 
and I liked them. Every week, they leave their 
beautiful homes and picture gardens, and go to 
look upon wounds and agonised faces at the 
hospitals all day long; bandaging, dressing, feed- 
ing, and tending their own Japanese soldiers, and 
also our poor Russians. I felt drawn to them at 



THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 61 

once, as I never did to the great ladies in Tokyo, 
and I am sure we shall be real friends — especially 
one little grey wren of a woman, whose gentle 
eyes and smile made hers the most attractive 
Japanese face I have ever seen. She noted my 
garden row of blooming plants and dwarf pines, 
bought from the grizzled old gardener who waits 
for me at the gate every afternoon when I come 
home, and she begged me to come to her garden — 
to come at six o'clock any morning and see her 
asagaos ( convolvuli ) . This is surely the land of 
early rising. 

I went to the hospital the next day, wearing all 
Off my new decorations with my Russian Red 
Cross badges; and, from the first sentry at the 
gate to Vladimir, the row of buttons and medals 
across my white dress front created a grand sen- 
sation. I waited for Vladimir to say something; 
and in silence I watched the humour rise and 
twinkle in his eyes. The fun bubbled and bubbled, 
and finally flashed out, as he smiled broadly and 
asked, "For the love of the Lord, Sophia, where 
did you get all those orders? Have you been to 
the little shop in the Palais Royal.? And what are 
they.? For merit, for deeds of valour, for good 
conduct, for standing around while an ambassador 
signed his name, or a Grand Duchess descended 
from a railway carriage, or for good roubles laid 
in the Japanese palm.? I am not a shadow beside 



62 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

you in my gala uniform. You are, as the English 
officers say, decked out like a Christmas tree. 
Would you like Akimoff's St. George, or Dra- 
chenberg's St. Anne to help out?" 

And he called them all in to see me, the Chevalier 
of the Red Cross ! The Commandant of Volunteer 
Nurses ! He bade them go tell little Sienkiewicz 
to come and see me wearing full dress and ordinary 
decorations, grand cordons and small buttons all 
at once, at the same time, side by side ; for Sienkie- 
wicz would rise from his cot, plaster-bound, band- 
aged, with his leg in splints, as he was, with the 
horror of it, they knew. The son is the father all 
over again, only more so ; and splits the hairs of 
court etiquette and regulations here in prison, as 
if he were the old count safely at peace in the 
bureau of decorations in Petersburg. 

With all the fun they made of me, and the 
amusement it furnished them to see a loyal Rus- 
sion wearing the Japanese Imperial Chrysanthe- 
mums and Phoenix over my heart, Vladimir was 
pleased with what I had done. 

I fear I did look like those wrinkled old sentries, 
second-reserve men, who wear all their China War, 
Boxer Expedition, valour and sharpshooter medals 
as they stand sullenly guarding prisoners here, 
instead of winning more medals in Manchuria. 
Poor veterans ! We do not see here the fine flower, 
or even the average of the active army of Japan, 



THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 6S 

which is doing such inexpHcable things in the field. 
If all their officers and men in Manchuria were as 
these we come in contact with in Matsuyama, our 
Russian troops could tell a better tale. No am- 
bitious soldier can be satisfied to stay back here 
and protect the enemy. Oh, no ! Unfortunately, 
we see most the petty Japan of the petty officials, 
the surly Japan of the disappointed old third-re- 
servists. The preux chevaliers, the true followers 
of Bushido, the knightly creed of Japan, are busy 
elsewhere, over in Manchuria — all save the Sur- 
geon-in-Chief. He is mercifully left with us, as 
type and living example of Japan's best. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE DOYO 

Wednesday, August 10th. 
TT has been for years my role to act as special 
-*■ advocate, defender, and expounder of the 
Japanese, with Vladimir often taking sides against 
me and finding a certain delight in teasing and 
goading me on to the most extreme and extrava- 
gant statements, in my zeal and partisanship. 
How often have I stopped breathless, with crimson 
cheeks and moist forehead, after a bout with my 
fun-loving tormentor or the dear circle in Rome, 
on the everlasting topic of Japan ! I have de- 
clared the Japanese to be the people of the future ; 
Japanese art, Asia's last and best gift to the 
world's civilisation. But after AlexeiefF assumed 
his calamitous viceroyship, and relations became 
tense between Russia and Japan, the subject was 
taboo for me, and I had to sit still and silent while 
the most abominable slanders and misconceptions 
were bandied about me. There were many awk- 
ward moments for me in Petersburg, when some 

malicious or tactless woman, like Sophia A , 

for instance, said: "But of course, Sophia Ivan- 
ovna does not agree with us. She has always 



THE DOYO 65 

loved and praised the Japanese, and thinks them 
the only perfect people on earth. Is it not so?" 

"I knew many good people in Japan, when I 
lived there, but it was many years ago. I cannot 
say that I know any of these Komuras, and Kat- 
suras and Kurinos, who have made so much 
trouble with Russian affairs; and it may be that 
Japan has entirely changed now, with all the new 
ways they have adopted. They are much like 
Europeans to-day, I hear." This was as much as 
I could say in reply. I wanted to say : "They are 
not savages, believe me. They have religions of 
their own ; there are many Christians ; they possess 
a unique, special, and high civilisation of their own, 
and if they borrowed, they did not borrow nor 
copy their philosophy, their jurisprudence, and 
their arts from Greece or Rome as North Europe 
did. Read their book Bushido, for the code of 
the samurai, and you will see that our army is 
meeting an honourable foe, an enemy which de- 
mands great generalship to defeat." 

Deep down in their inscrutable hearts, the Jap- 
anese soldiers feel themselves consecrated as to a 
religious cause, when they go to war for their 
Emperor, who is to them still a sacred being, the 
Sun God, divinely descended to earth. I know how 
high is the principle and how unselfish the abandon 
with which Vladimir went to this war ; and I know 
how differently, from what other motives other 



66 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

officers went to Manchuria. And the rank and file? 
Have the mujiks in our wheat fields the same en- 
lightenment, the same comprehensions of any such 
warrior's creed as this Bushido, which the toilers 
in the rice fields and the jinrikisha coolies know, 
and can expound to one?" 

Now Vladimir begs me to talk more about 
Japan, to explain Bushido and other things to 

Akimoff and D , who have the strangest 

notions. Despite the fury of those first weeks in 
Petersburg, and the exciting weeks in Manchuria, 
Vladimir can still see with clear impartial discern- 
ing eyes the real, true Japan that surrounds him 
in this far province. He realises that they are 
people, human beings, although he and the other 
Russian sufferers saw little of Japan as they were 
carried off and on hospital ships on stretchers, 
and through the streets. But, from that bird's- 
eye glimpse and their acquaintance with the 
doctors, nurses, and attendants, the hot-heads 
know it all — the country, the people, the national 
character and ideals, social institutions and home 
life — all — everything. And there is no use to 
contradict them. They cannot be misinformed. 
They know things by their own second sight and 
intuitions, evidently. Dr. Rein, the German 
savant, is a babe and a tyro beside them; and 
Lafcadio Hearn, the one true expounder of this 
human mystery, Japan, is a visionary, they say. 



THE DOYO 67 

These swashbuckling young Cossacks are con- 
vinced of the inherent savagery and cruelty of 
the Japanese people. They cannot distinguish be- 
tween them and the Chinese, and several times 
they have recounted things the Chinese did during 
the Boxer Rebellion, as things that happened in 
Japan: "Well," say they, "may be the Chinese 
did do it that particular time, but the Japanese 
will do it, too. They are not a bit different. The 
same race, the same race ! One wears a pigtail and 
the other does not. That is all." 

It is useless to try to do anything with such 
wrong-headed people, but Vladimir begs me to be 
patient with them a little longer and try to con- 
vince them that all Japan is not waiting to torture 
and slaughter them, and that their lives do not 
hang by a slender thread. They really believe 
that the continual presence of an Italian gunboat 
in the Straits of Shimonoseki is the only guarantee 
of their lives being spared. These tell me, that in 
the event of an uprising, that Italian gunboat 
will come and in the name of all Europe demand 
the Russian prisoners and take them in safe keep- 
ing. I know the size of Italian gunboats in the 
Pacific, and I laugh, remembering those fleets of 
huge ships at Ujina and Kure — also our converted 
Volunteer ships in Japanese hands. 

"Why should the Japanese rise and slaughter 
these unarmed prisoners in Matsuyama.^" I ask. 



68 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

"Oh ! You see, when the turn comes and we are 
winning all the victories, then the Japanese will 
be crazed by their continual defeats and make a 
savage onslaught on any Russian they can see — 
kill every European on their islands." 

I laughed at the absurd notions, and Akimoff 
was almost offended, and said I laughed at the 
idea of a Russian victory ! 

"MoTz Dieu! She is right. I laugh, too, at the 
idea of those asses, those fools, those imbeciles, at 
Liaoyang ever crying Pobieda! Pobieda! [Vic- 
tory! Victory!]" cried an irate old officer. 

Soon after I arrived we learned of the raids of 
the Vladivostok ships down to the mouth of 
Tokyo Bay, where they sank and captured mer- 
chant ships at their will. All the Japanese war- 
ships were ranged in front of Port Arthur, and 
the coasts of Japan lay at our mercy. "More's 
the pity," Hansen says, "that they did not sail in 
and destroy the railway wherever it came near the 
shores, drop a shell into the shrines of Ise, and sow 
the mouth of Tokj'^o Bay so full of mines that no 
ships would dare sail there while the war lasted." 
He thinks of nothing but the loss of Makaroff 
and the Petropavlovsk, poor man, and they begin 
to think that his mind is affected, unhinged first 
by the shock and horror of that experience, and 
then by the night of horror when he floated in a 
typhoon sea, when the junk by which he was 



THE DOYO 69 

escaping with despatches from Port Arthur to 
Chefoo was blown up by a mine just as a Japanese 
torpedo boat overhauled it. 

When he heard that Skrjdloff's ships had been 
ravaging the coast and preparing to land and 
effect the rescue of these Matsuyama prisoners, he 
lay awake all night. When he dozed by day, he 
begged the others to wake him if the welcome 
sound of Skrydloff's guns were heard. "More 
likely the shrieks of the mob coming to murder us 
before Skrydloff's men can reach us. But we will 
make a fight for our lives then," he says grimly. 

Now Hansen has settled into a gloomy, sombre 
mood, lying for hours with his face covered, 
making no sound or answer. "God grant he does 
not go insane here," sighs Vladimir. "There is 
enough without that. This doyo, the very hottest 
part of summer, is when most people do lose their 
reason." 

The sun burns by day and the nights are 
breathless. Only the thick, thatched roofs save 
the thin wooden barracks from being so many 
ovens, and the merciful darkness comes as early 
as in the tropics. This is the weather that is good 
for the rice crop, and if the fateful hundredth day 
passes without typhoon, the kernels of grain will 
be formed and will stand any further storms. 
The promise is for the greatest rice crop ever 
known, something to surpass the great crop of last 



70 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

year which the peasants said was a sign from the 
gods to go to war. I suppose a great crop this 
year will mean to continue the war. And we in 
Russia? What crops are they gathering there .^^ 
What signs from the gods for us.^^ 

"vii^ <^ '<^ <;:;> 

Sunday, August 14th. 

Last night there was a Banza% that is an illu- 
mination of the houses with strings of lanterns, 
and a lantern procession to celebrate the naval vic- 
tory they claim was won just outside Shimonoseki. 
The major-domo of my household says the Japa- 
nese sunk the Rurik, and captured all the crew. I 
do not believe it. 

It was a beautiful sight, and Anna and I went to 
the upper rooms, when the shouting told that the 
procession was near our gate. We looked out 
through the gap in the house roofs to the long 
line of the moat reflecting the rows of red lanterns 
that hung along the eaves and doubling every lan- 
tern that moved along the highv/ay. 

But what sorrow the gay sight drove to my 
heart ! How the shrill, ecstatic cries of Banzai! 
Banzai! Banzai! always three times in succession, 
made me wail with misery, with anguish for my 
country's disaster; made me realise that the day 
of victory and peace is yet further removed. 

It was my one wish that Vladimir and the poor 



THE DOYO 71 

sufferers in the hospital would not hear all the 
chorus of rejoicing voices and the discordant blare 
of fifes and drums; but it seems that the proces- 
sion did march entirely around the barracks com- 
pound. The prisoners heard and knew that it 
signified fresh sorrows for Russia. 

To-day, every patient is worse, fevers are 
higher, wounds inflamed, and nerves worn by a 
sleepless night. With Vladimir, every shattered 
nerve is on edge; each sound and jar is pain; his 
head burns, and the wounds throb through their 
bandages. "And I lie here, a helpless hulk of 
flesh! the wreck of a man, who must listen to jeers 
at Russia's defeats !" he exclaims, with tears burn- 
ing in his e3^es. "Ah! why have I lived for this? 
Why do I wish to live?" 

Hansen roamed the ward all night, raging like 
an angry wolf, grinding his teeth, tossing his 
arms, and making efforts to break away and 
grapple with the celebrants outside. To-day, he 
lies scowling on his cot, his face covered with a 
fan half the time, although it is a day of great 
heat. It seemed to me that I could not refrain 
from going to protest to the surgeons against 
such inhumanity to helpless, wounded, suffering 
men, as was committed last night; but Vladimir, 
moaning and beating with his fingers on my hand, 
as waves of pain swept through him, besought me 
not to speak of it. 



n AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

"No, no, Sophia. It is better to endure. Per- 
haps you will want to protest later on for some- 
thing else. Keep peace, keep friends. The 
surgeons and nurses like you, you know. They 
will not, if you see things, or say things. That 
was a touch of their Bushido last night. Show 
your Bushido, and do not refer to it." 

But I left with sorrow and walked home in de- 
pression from the gate where Anna was waiting to 
walk with me. "Watanabe wishes to go the first 
of September," she told me. "He says the tourists 
will be coming then, and he wishes to get a travel 
engagement." 

"But what shall we do without him?" I cried 
almost in fright, for it seemed that disasters were 
heaping upon me; that more and worse would 
follow. "How shall we get on without our courier 
as interpreter .f' How shall we manage with the 
police visits and all? No, no. He cannot go." 

"But, Madame, we shall manage perfectly with- 
out him. The butler and the cook are both very 
discontented that he stays. He really absorbs 
much of the profits which would come to them. I 
do not like him. He is too much the spy. I fear 
he may like to make sensations, since it is so dull 
here for him. Madame knows the Japanese lan- 
guage now." 

He brought me a Karatsu tea bowl as a 
farewell present, and when I added it to my 



THE DOYO 73 

shelf of tea bowls, and sighed to think it might be 
the last of the same Tien hai quality, he assured 
me that his friend, the curio dealer, would continue 
to bring to me any choice pottery pieces, and that 
he would soon have some from Tosa and Bungo 
provinces. I expressed fear that the many officers 
now here might prove rivals, and Watanabe struck 
an attitude and said scornfully : "Oh ! these officers 
here do not know, unless you educate them yourself. 
They are just like tourists. We can sell them any- 
thing, if we make it a big price and tell them it 
came from old daimio's go-down ; or from some 
one whose only son is killed in war; or some rich 
man who wants to buy war bonds. They don't 
know anything about the real articles of Japan, 
those other horios.^^ 

I would like to tell that to Vladimir's visitors 
from the Kokaido; who, having been in Nagasaki 
once or twice on ships, know all of Japanese art 
and preach Japanese art, de haut en has, to us at 
the barracks. 

Before Watanabe left, he had the pleasure of 
ushering in and serving tea to the Governor and 
his wife. During the visit, the dignitary ex- 
pressed regret for the procession that passed by 
the barracks and jeered outside the Kokaido. "It 
shall not happen again," he said. "The chief 
surgeon is quite angry that the city people should 
be so unkind to his sick foreigners. You will hear 



74 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

it here at your house, of course, when there is a 
Banzai, but the wounded soldiers shall not be 
wakened and made unhappy again. The common 
people do not always think, you know. You must 
excuse them, that they seem so impolite. You will 
tell me also if any one is impolite here at your 
house, or in the street. We want to do every kind- 
ness to you in Matsuyama." 

Somehow, something, homesickness, over-sensi- 
tive nerves or morbidity, made this bit of chivalry 
and sympathy so touching to me, that I could not 
keep back the tears in telling the Governor how 
kind he was, and also the chief -surgeon, and all 
with whom I had anything to do in Matsuyama. 
"It is so far beyond any kindness I had ever 
dreamed of. I only wish my friends in Russia 
could know all the consideration and courtesy 
shown me here." 

"Yes," said the Governor, sighing, "I dare say 
the people in Russia have a very wrong idea of us 
in every way. Because we are not of their skin 
and their religion, they think we are all uncivilised 
and barbarous as the Turcoman tribes. Perhaps 
the war will have one good result in making the 
two nations acquainted." 

How I admired those two ! Aristocrats to the 
finger-tips, cultivated, courteous, refined, with a 
dignity of manner incomparable. While I puffed 
and fanned, in the thinnest of lingerie blouses, the 



THE DOYO 75 

Japanese grande dame sat cool and calm in a grey 
silk kimono, girt around the body with double folds 
of a heavy brocaded satin obi. She was a harmony 
of soft silver grey and sheeny dove colours. There 
was a glint of gold in the stiff fabric of her obi, 
a tiny gold clasp on the cord that bound the obi 
in place. A single amber shell pin was thrust in 
her hair, and the head and neck, perfect in their 
lines, in the massing and relief of black and ivory, 
stood out from the surplice folds of the kimono 
like a superb etching. As a work of art, she was 
perfection, a restful, perfectly composed and 
balanced study ; the tones and values true. I 
gazed at her enchanted, and thought how different 
this grande dame before me from the vulgar 
travesty of the Japanese woman that parades our 
stage. Think of those plays we saw in London ! 
the "Madame Butterfly," and "The Darling of 
the Gods !" What a million miles between this 
daimio's daughter and that giggling hoyden with 
frizzled hair and cabbage bunches of flowers over 
each ear ! No, Europe does not understand Japan. 
Despite all these years of travel and photography, 
Europe does not yet know what a Japanese lady 
looks like, how she dresses, nor least of all how ex- 
quisitely smooth and simple is her coiffure. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE "RURIK'S" MEN 

Tuesday, August 16th. 

ANOTHER disaster! The saints seem ar- 
rayed against us. Stackelberg's corps has 
been defeated, routed, driven back from its march 
south to reheve Port Arthur ! The prisoners 
arrived this morning with a budget of news. The 
rehef of Port Arthur would be a step towards our 
rehef, and now our hopes are set back many weeks. 

However, I am here with Vladimir now. He 
lives. He can speak. I can do for him, and be 
with him ; and I find that I have so much to be 
thankful for in these instances that I do not fret 
myself about rescue. I shall be glad when it 
comes, and oh ! Vladimir, too. If he is only able to 
move about and walk, and able to go to Kobe, 
and on board a mail steamer, when the relief comes. 
When it comes \ Yes. When.^^ 

It is true. There was a naval battle. The 
Rurik was sunk, and the officers have all arrived 
here. None would believe the accounts read in the 
Japanese papers, but the English newspapers 

76 



THE "RURIK'S" MEN 77 

from Kobe tell it, and Russia's sorrow is complete. 
"PiOnty horios come to-day," said the maid when 
she ushered in my Japanese teacher in the morn- 
ing. "Will missis go with Red Cross ladies to 
Takahama to-day .f^ All ladies go eleven o'clock 
train to see prisoners." But I could not think of 
such a thing, as a sightseeing trip. It seemed to 
shock and offend me greatly, that the Japanese 
ladies were going down to the steamer landing to 
watch and to look at our poor wounded Russians 
until I remembered what service these Red Cross 
members render. 

As I passed the operating room on my way to 
my own ward in the afternoon, they were taking 
away two litters. One face looked familiar, pos- 
sibly only the fair-haired, Courland type, and 
when the little sister of charity smiled her cheer- 
ful greeting and said: ^^Rurik sans/' the lump in 
my throat made me look away. In Vladimir's 
ward, all was excitement over the arrivals and 
their sad news. The vice-commander of the un- 
happy Rurik was in AkimofF's room, where the 
others had gathered, and we could hear the slow, 
sad monotone of a sick man's voice, as some one 
related a long, long story which no one inter- 
rupted. 

**How I wish I could hear them," said poor 
Vladimir, "Go, Sophia, and ask them to let you 
listen for me. They will, they will. They say 



78 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Von Woerffel was on the Rur'ik, and badly 
wounded. Ask them. They put him on a cork 
mattress and threw him over, and so he was saved. 
Those Japanese picked up every man from the 
Rurik, the whole six hundred of them. Of course, 
we prisoners are their assets, their gold reserve, 
their pawns and chips in the game. We are as 
good for exchange and quotations as bonds or 
gold. Oh ! God ! to think that I — ^I, myself — my 
own poor body has its daily market value in this 
stock-gamble of nations ! Bid, Sophia, bid ! 
Make your game, gentlemen ! Make your game ! 
What am I worth? What do you give, give, 
give ?" 

"Von Woerffel ! Impossible !" I said. "He is 
still in Petersburg, Vladimir, or at Cronstadt, 
rather. I saw him the very day I left. He could 
not have joined the fleet at Vladivostok in this 
time, surely. He was complaining that his 
admiral would not let him go to the Pacific. But, 
Vladimir," I cried, jumping to my feet. "He is 
here now. I saw him. It was he, of course. They 
were taking him from the operating room. I saw 
the side-face only, in bandages. Oh ! to think that 
I have passed him by !" 

Poor Von Woerffel lay in the next ward, his 
face whiter than the bandages, whiter than the 
pillows. How changed from the alert and trim 
young fellow in spotless uniform, who had talked 



THE "RURIK'S'' MEN 79 

with me on the Quai des Anglais such a few weeks 
ago ! He was amazed at the idea of my going to 
Japan, and at my courage in taking the long 
journey into the enemy's country. How gaily he 
had said: ''Au re'voir, I hope to meet you in Japan. 
The Vladivostok fleet will not let our brave officers 
linger in sea-coast prisons. We will make a sortie 
while those poor rats sit in their trap in Port 
Arthur and do nothing. We will come to your 
rescue. La Revanche is for us." 

And now we meet in Matsuyama ! What irony 
of fate ! What sarcasm in prophecy ! What 
sorrow and humiliation ! 

"Mikail Ivanovitch, are you sleeping.?" I asked 
quietly, and he opened his eyes, stared a full 
minute, shut them, and again looked at me, with- 
out a word. "How is it that you are here.? Sophia 
von Theill ! Sophia von Theill ! But why are you 
dressed like these Japanese women.? Yes, you 
were leaving for Japan when I saw you on the 
quay. And I too have come to Japan. Direct to 
Japan! From Petersburg to Matsuyama in 
twenty-seven days ! I only had two days in Vladi- 
vostok, and then in two days more, we — we — 
oh — our ship was sinking — and we were all made 
prisoners; it was better than drowning — perhaps. 
And I am here, you see. But Vladimir.? How 
do you find him.?" 

"Ah! a wreck. So maimed, so crippled, I can- 



80 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

not hope hardly that he will ever be himself again. 
You will find some old acquaintances here. Others, 
like yourself, came from Petersburg to Matsuyama 
direct — straight to the arms of the enemy. There 
are even some traitor Poles and some political 
exiles who were permitted to volunteer for Siberian 
regiments, who have intentionally surrendered to 
the Japanese. One even surrendered to Japanese 
hospital nurses ! to stretcher-bearers ! When they 
showed him there was no one with hands free to 
accept his sword even, he took a bearer's place in 
carrjdng the stretcher and let the hospital coolie 
have the sword. Paul Akimoff was in the 
stretcher, half dead from a wound, but not too 
dead to see and hear that. Akimoff lives to give 
that miscreant his dues, as much as for the 
great revenge — revenge for being a prisoner of 
war. 

"Yes. The army and navy are full of traitors. 
I had no idea what the army w^as like until I came 
across Siberia. I may have seen four officers on 
the way to the front who w^ere not drunk, but not 
more than four. It is one long champagne and 
vodka carouse from the Urals to the Amur. All 
are quarrelling and trying to displace and circum- 
vent one another, when they get half sober. None 
of them will work together. Each balks and un- 
does the other's work. Each one is struggling for 
promotion, decorations, or the commander's favour 



THE "RURIK'S' MEN 81 

— or the Viceroy's, which seems more important. 
The real war is at headquarters. The Japanese 
cannot undo us as quickly as this dual authority 
will, if Nicholas does not soon put an end to it, 
and send one or the other home. Vladivostok and 
the fleet are ringing with the scandalous conduct 
of the army. No discipline, no order — a pack of 
drunken officers, who do not know their duties, or 
anything else. 

"It made me sick to reach Vladivostok and 
hear of the glorious cruise Skrydloff's fleet had 
made down the Japanese coast. That was before 
my arrival. They sank everything that came 
along, even one British ship that may make us a 
war with England yet. The ships went near 
enough to see the smoke and the lights of Tokyo, 
and if they had had time they would have come 
around here and carried off the prisoners. I hoped 
I was going to be in for a trip of that kind, when 
we put out of Vladivostok and headed south ; but 
instead, we ran alongside the whole Japanese fleet 
and their infernal gunnery rained shells on the 
poor Rurik, until it was all up with us. The roar 
of the Japanese shells drove the breath and life out 
of me; and every roar meant the wreck of some 
part of the ship, the slaughtering of more men on 
deck. Ugh! I stepped over blood and corpses, 
and stepped on blood and corpses ; wiped my face 
when it was spattered with flesh and blood of my 



82 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

nearest comrades ; and threw overboard, once, a 
mangled arm that minute torn from a sailor's 
body, the fingers moving as it fell to the water. 
Oh! We tried to run for the Korean coast and 
beach the ship. We could not. The engines were 
injured, and the last one beat, beat, beat, so 
slowly — ^s topped — the pumps stopped — and then, 
but for some one rolling me over on a mattress 
and lashing me fast, I should not be here. Here ! 
Here ! In a Japanese prison ! I don't know that 
it is so much to be alive after all. Better those 
who died in the fight ; who do not know how it feels 
to be a prisoner. A prisoner ! A captive behind 
Japanese bayonets. 

"The Rurik had come down to meet the Port 
Arthur fleet, which had been ordered to break out 
and run for Vladivostok. Our flotte peureuse 
lived up to its record, and ran. It was too hot; 
the sun was in his eyes ; an admiral had forgotten 
his toilet vinegar, or something equally momen- 
tous ; so, as soon as that demon of a Togo came at 
him, they cut and ran for the home harbour, like 
a pack of children playing at war. Now they are 
all safe, if not too comfortable, under the guns 
of Viterbo's forts again — =all except the few ships 
that got away to Kiaochao and Shanghai. They 
blame Alexeieff for everything. He and Starke 
had let things run to such a pass that Makaroff 
said it would need a year for him to make it a 



THE "RURIK'S*' MEN 83 

fighting fleet. It was good for a gala parade, and 
birthday salutes only. Bahl Better that we had 
never tried to be a naval power and to have fleets 
than have these fiascos. War is an entertaining 
spectacle — if one remains the passive spectator." 



CHAPTER IX 

THE CZAREVITCH 

Wednesday, August 17th. 

TO-DAY we Russians are rejoicing over good 
news. The chief-surgeon made the rounds 
to announce it and see the beneficial effects. It is 
our Banzai. 

I knew it myself last evening, when the Japanese 
amah ran into the garden with a pink gogai slip 
and told me: ^'Rossia — Kogo San-Akamho — Ko- 
domo — Banzai!''' (Russian Empress, a child, a 
boy, Hurrah!) I could hardly believe it at first. 
Could the gracious Czaritsa really have attained 
her dearest wish? Has the long-prayed-for 
Czarevitch really come ? Can we be sure that there 
is no mistake? Or only another girl? 

How different is the whole future of Russia ! I 
lose myself in thinking and in picturing the disma}'- 
of certain personages at Tsarskoe; the grand 
bouleversement that must ensue ; the grand re- 
arrangement of personal values ! I see the rueful 
faces of Marie Eeodorovna's following; the dis- 
comfiture of the clique of Mikail Alexandrovitch ; 
the dismay of Vladimir Alexandrovitch! I laugh, 

84 



THE CZAREVITCH 85 

and throw my arms unconsciously, as the Japanese 
do when they shout Banzai! Ah ! Banzai! indeed, 
Christ and the saints have been merciful at last. 
They have given Russia its dearest wish. They 
have answered many millions of prayers. We are 
lifted out of our darkest despair. 

But how, how did they let it happen.'* By what 
miracle did the new-born one live? What spared 
him from those merciless fingers ? But he lives ! 
Our Czarevitch ! Our little Alexis Nicholaivitch ! 
And the gracious Czaritsa must be almost dead 
with joy. May the saints protect her ! 

Von Woerffel's rage and fury keep him in high 
fever and retard his recovery. AkimofF says he 
talks calmly and dispassionately of the fiasco in 
my presence ; but if so, I am glad not to have seen 
him when his wrath was at its height. He de- 
nounces the whole "Port Arthur gang," rakes over 
the Viceroy, the Grand Duke and the Admiralty, 
the Cronstadt and the Black Sea fleets. All of 
them have just such commanders, he says, timor- 
ous, cowardly, fussy, old landlubbers and grannies, 
who jump if a gun pops, who have no notion of 
working, of suffering personal discomfort, or ever 
fighting — fighting to cripple and sink the enem}^; 
fighting to win. Their only use is for naval re- 
views and parades, in a calm sea, on a sunny day, 
the imperial yacht or a Grand Duke looking on, 
crosses and ribands coming down in showers. 



86 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Bah! When there are any trial trips, any 
manoeuvres or cruises to make, then the Finnish 
and Courland officers^ who made the navy in the old 
Alexander's time, and who never get any promo- 
tion — then these officers from the Baltic provinces 
are made use of. "That's all we are good for," 
said Von Woerffel bitterly — "the crosses, the 
compliments, the court banquets are for theAlexei- 
effs and the Admiralty gang. You mark me, not 
a ship will do anything at Port Arthur from now 
on, except it has a Lutheran — a Finnish, or a 
Baltic-province commander. The line of greatest 
efficiency is a religious and a geographic one; just 
as the line of promotion and favouritism is also." 

Nicholas de Lieven had the luck to get down to 
Saigon with his gunboat the Diana. He must dis- 
arm and stay there until the end of the war; but 
then Saigon is like a home in friendly feeling. It 
is the same as a Russian port, and he is not badly 
off. Another gunboat tried to go clear around 
all the Japanese islands to Vladivostok, but the 
Japanese chased her and they only managed to 
reach the Saghalien coast, run the ship ashore, and 
make their escape. Funnily enough, the Japanese 
papers go into ecstasies over this performance of 
the Novik; and my Japanese teacher was all ani- 
mation when I next saw him, his mask of a face 
alive and twitching, the statuesque manner all off. 

"What brave little ship of yours the Novih" 



THE CZAREVITCH 87 

he said. "We admire it much, but we are glad 
that you have no more Hke it. Very glad." 

''v^ '<;:;:iy -<;:> '^^ 

Monday, August 22nd. 

The little social amenities and small courtesies 
of life still go on. The military commander makes 
stated visits to the wounded officers at the bar- 
racks, and to the others at the Town Hall or 
Kokaido, and at the house opposite, where the 
Rurik's officers are quartered. The officers have a 
certain amount of liberty ; a surprising amount, it 
seems to me. Twice a week they, in turn, go out 
to Dogo Hot Springs in the suburbs and enjoy 
the mineral baths, and they can go about town 
shopping with a soldier as escort. They are not 
half as badly off, not a tenth as much imprisoned 
in the real sense of the word, as we imagined in 
Russia. I am surprised, shocked, I might almost 
say, any time I meet them, at the little shops in the 
city. The sergeants who go about with them too 
seem so much more amiable and polite than the 
upstart interpreters. 

These interpreters are the cause and the source 
of all trouble and misunderstanding. No one here, 
any more than in Europe, would dream of study- 
ing Russian as an accomplishment, or a necessary 
part of a liberal education, any more than we 
should have dreamed of studying Japanese. So, 



88 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

when the war broke out, there we were, both sides 
at the mercy of a few trained official interpreters 
and a horde of dispossessed barbers, small curio 
dealers, photographers, and house-boys from 
Siberian towns and Manchurian garrisons. The 
two most difficult languages of the two hemispheres 
came together with woeful results, as we see daily. 
One of the imperial princes of Japan sent an 
equerry down the Inland Sea to visit all the 
military hospitals and convey his kind inquiries to 
the wounded. With fine courtesy, they made no 
distinction between the two peoples, and the little 
man went through every ward of the prisoners' 
hospital, and into each Russian officer's room. I 
missed the event, but I had a dozen accounts of it, 
and Akimoff's was most amusing. The equerry 
was serious and courtly, and seemed most kindly, 
but his message from his imperial master was 
translated to Akimoff's astonished ears : "His Im- 
perial Highness sends his compliments to you brave 
men, who have been wounded in the field of battle. 
You have served your country well and his High- 
ness honours you. He regrets that you must now 
suffer from the heat of our Japanese summers, but 
if you will behave yourselves it will soon be cooler!"* 
Bon Dieu! Did tli^ conventionalities and banal- 
ities go further ! I had to laugh myself, when 
Akimoff detailed it with profound bows. All this 
was stammered out to liim by the interpreter in 



THE CZAREVITCH 89 

very bad Russian, in the nursery idioms and 
phrases we use to small children when they are 
naughty. A Prince's compliments in mujik'^s lan- 
guage ! 

We have so many kindly little attentions from 
the common people, that Vladimir begins to admit 
much that I claim for the high soul of the race. 
Every few nights, a rain of cigarettes, plums, 
fans, and little trifles come over the fence of the 
Kokaido and the Dairinji. There are officers 
downstairs at the Kokaido, and two hundred of 
rank and file upstairs, and at the Dairinji there 
are only soldiers. This rain of manna, of course, 
pleased the Cossacks, but neither they nor the 
officers could understand it. I spoke of it to one 
of the American missionaries with whom I walked 
from the photograph shop to the post office, and 
she laughed greatly. "Oh, that is the Japanese 
way of sympathising with the poor horios. The 
Red Cross can give such things openly, when the 
prisoners are arriving at Takahama or passing 
through a railroad station in train ; but here of 
course there is a difference. My cook told me with 
glee as a great secret that she had been over with 
her friends last night to throw some cigarettes over 
the fence for the poor horios. They are so sorry 
for them. You might think these poor, hard- 
working people would envy the horios their lives of 
ease, and compare their present tasks with the 



90 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

prisoners' leisure. But this is the Japanese way. 
Altruism in an object lesson. The European 
philosophers ought to see this situation. I hope 
that some one showers mysterious gifts on the 
Japanese prisoners in Russia. Do you fear the 
Yellow Peril, Madame von Theill, when such in- 
cidents can happen down in the remotest provinces, 
where we are so little Europeanised .^^ I will chal- 
lenge you to give me an incident comparable to 
this on either side during the Franco-Prussian 
war." 

"Yes. That is something to think about," said 
Vladimir as he lay still, immovable, ready for me to 
read to him some ever-charming chapter of Pierre 
Loti's "Ramuntcho." 

■^^ '<;;;^ -^^ -^^ 

Thursday, September 1st. 

Loris K arrived this week with Boris 

Tikhon, that soldier of fortune, revolutionist, and 
stormy petrel, who is always everywhere when 
things are seething ; in the Balkans ; flying from 
the Boxers ; tramping Afghanistan in disguise ; 
and even coming down through India in turban 
and gown. The agitator has been shut up in 
Port Arthur these last months, and has been de- 
fying General Stoessel, who refused him privileges 
as a war correspondent. Stoessel said that he was 
a reserve officer and must go on duty ; and Boris 



THE CZAREVITCH 91 

said the War Office had given him a special stand- 
ing and exemption, and that the Viceroy knew and 
approved it. As Stoessel still tried to force him 
to duty, Boris slipped out through the Japanese 
lines last month, went to the Viceroy at Liaoyang, 
and brought back to Port Arthur a special order 
defining his status, as officer on leave and civil 
detail or something. Stoessel was furious, of 
course, so Boris kept out of his sight until last 
week, when Stoessel again ordered him to take 
duty or leave. It seems that the real siege is on 
now, and it is no longer possible to pass the land 

lines ; so Boris started off with Loris K , who 

was going to Chefoo in a junk, carrying naval 
despatches. They were becalmed and delayed in a 
fog, which cleared and showed them three Japanese 
torpedo boats in sight. They tied stones to the 
despatches and threw them overboard, and as the 
Japanese were watching through glasses and saw 
both foreigners drop white things into the water, 
both were called despatch bearers, and Boris could 
not convince them of his civil and non-combatant 
quality. He also had uniform in his portman- 
teaus, so here he is with Loris, who loathes him. 
As a naval messenger, they imprison him; as a 
war correspondent, they do not quarter him with 
the other officers, but in a little chalet in a garden 
at the back of a building, where seventy Cossacks 
are kept. "My bodyguard?" says Boris magnifi- 



92 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

cently. "An ideal retreat for an anchorite or a 
literary man," he further said. "I shall prepare 
now the conferences I shall deliver before scien- 
tific societies when I return to Russia. I shall give 
addresses also in Vienna. I am now free to carry 
out my idea of writing a great historical novel, a 
romance of war and battle." 

"Umph!" groaned Vladimir, "that is continu- 
ing the occupation of war correspondent, it seems 
to me. A romance of war and battle ! That's all 
they have written to Russian and French journals 
so far. Maybe not such pure fiction, such wonder- 
ful creative work and feats of imagination as the 
English papers put out. Ah ! Bah ! Why were 
we ever drawn into this war, anyhow .^ How Paul 
Lessar fought to prevent it! It will kill him 
before the winter begins. He has fought against 
it these two years, but Alexeieff would have it. All 
these humiliating disasters are upon us, solely that 
Vladimir Alexandrovitch, and the Viceroy, that 
Bezobrazoff creature, and the harpy crowd might 
get dividends on their Yalu stock. Poor Paul ! 
Poor Paul !" 



CHAPTER X 

MY JAPANESE HOME 

Friday, September 2nd. 
T AM getting along famously with my Japanese. 
-*- All that I ever knew of the language has come 
back to me, and with daily lessons I seem to grasp 
it quickly. I understand the servants, and can 
make the servants understand me. I can speak to 
the surly old sentries at the gates, to the little Red 
Cross nurses, and to the underlings at the hos- 
pital; and yesterday was flattered indeed, when 
they asked me to come to the operating room and 
interpret for the surgeon in charge. The doctor 
was profuse in thanks, escorted me back to Vladi- 
mir's room, and thanked him and praised him for 
my help. As if that were not Japanese surely ! 
The Oriental view of me, as Vladimir's piece of 
property. It was a tonic for Vladimir though, to 
see me thus patronised and put in the Japanese 
woman's place. 

I had not noticed until then, how I am appealed 
to every now and then at the barracks to 
straighten out some tangle of language ; to tell the 
nurses what it is the sick one wants, and to explain 

93 



94 AS THE HAGUE OKDAlNS 

things to the sick ones and make them reasonable. 
Already, I have been able to smooth over many 
difficulties, and twice, the offensive young inter- 
preter in the Chancery, the one who was so for- 
ward the day of my arrival, has appealed to me 
to know how I should put such and suck a Russian 
sentence into Japanese. Each time he was blankly 
surprised at my rendering and dotted it down in 
characters ; and I am sure that they were sentences 
from prisoners' letters. I hope my translation 
proved the harmlessness of the phrases and helped 
to speed the letters on the long way — forty days 
to Russia, by the way of Suez and Odessa ! 

Watanabe told me that this barracks interpre- 
ter, the most obnoxious young cub I have ever 
met in Japan, and of a type which is new to me at 
this visit — is a soshi, or lawless student agitator, 
who got away ten years ago without passport to 
Vladivostok, and from being a house-boy ad- 
vanced to owning a barber shop. He picked up 
Russian, and while holding his officer patrons by 
the nose and ear as he shaved them, picked up all 
manner of military gossip and secrets, stole maps 
and papers from engineer headquarters, and got 
away with his information a month before war 
broke. Because of this service, the Japanese par- 
doned his past, and he was taken on as inter- 
preter. His case is typical, and here are our poor 
officers, who write an academic Russian, with their 



MY JAPANESE HOME 95 

letters subject to misinterpretation by these 
vicious little uneducated barbers and sosJii, who 
never studied a Russian grammar or used a 
dictionary. They have picked up the gabble and 
patois of East Siberia, and what they cannot 
understand they suspect. I myself have been 
startled at the translations they have made to the 
surgeons on their rounds. Several of our officers 
are now beginning the study of Japanese in self- 
defence, and I can believe that the Cossacks of the 
rank and file are served in most reckless fashion. 
"Translation is treachery," is the truest of axioms. 
I find my small household running smoothly 
without the ubiquitous Watanabe. My Japanese 
serve us to a marvel and give me a comfortable 
menage. If Vladimir could be with me here, to 
enjoy the toy house, and the doll's garden, and 
the httle pleasures of living, how happy I should 
be ! I have the stage setting of Arcadia, but did 
ever any one enjoy Arcadia alone.? 

The flower peddlers and the gardeners have 
found me out, as they did in Tokyo; and my 
garden now is perilously near to being over- 
crowded with pots of charming things. My ipo- 
meas are my greatest distraction, and all my little 
household are as keen as I for the heavenly "dawn- 
flowers," or Japanese asagao. But all to our- 
selves 1 Vladimir cannot see them. I cannot show 
them to him to my sorrow, and if I were to attempt 



96 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

to carry a few beheaded blossoms to him in a dart 
box, as the Japanese connoisseurs send them to 
flower shows and around town to rival growers, it 
would be a day's work to get the permits for such 
a suspicious proceeding. So, we enjoy our sunrise 
flower shows, and I exclaim over and rave to Anna, 
at each day's novelty in blooms. 

Each evening, when I am cooled and rested, be- 
fore my solitary dinner, I watch my evening prim- 
rose open ; &,nd where my dining-room and drawing- 
room engawa (verandah) meet, I have a dozen 
pots of trellised moon-flowers or night-blooming 
ipomeas, long trumpets of buds all day that 
open at dusk into spreading white corollas as large 
as my hand. They hang motionless in the warm, 
still, night air, flowers of enchantment, and they 
are so placed, that when the moon rose last week, 
the white light of heaven fell full upon the 
mysterious blossoms. I lie luxurious in my long 
chair, and look approvingly on my little drawing 
room with its soft grey walls, and its dark brown 
ceiling, a glint of light irradiating the gold 
screens in background. I look approvingly upon 
my enchanted garden, my tiny paradise, my minia- 
ture Arcadia. And Vladimir ! No further away 
from me than Villa Lante is from the Garibaldi 
statue ! Vladimir lying on a high, wooden cot in 
a room of bare pine boards, his one window look- 
ing upon a little court of bare earth, and the 



MY JAPANESE HOME 97 

rough walls of the next barrack! And what has 
he done? What crime has he committed to be 
treated so? — to be punished, to be restrained of 
his liberty, poor helpless wreck of a man that he 
now is — what has he done? 

He has served his Czar and Russia. That is all. 

But bitter reveries lead to nothing, and I try 
continually to lose myself in my immediate sur- 
roundings, my daily work and occupations, and 
not to look forward. For, cut off from and buried 
from all our own world, separated from each other 
for all but a few hours of the day, what can we 
base our hopes and plans upon? What have we 
to live for? What is there in life for us? 

But, we are together. Mercifully, the Japa- 
nese permit this. Think, if I were not allowed to 
come here, not to see him during all his time of 
suffering ! He would die surely. He would have 
died long ago ! 

If Vladimir only recovers ! If, now that the 
hideous cuts and wounds are healed, the bruised 
and broken ligaments, the stiffened joints and 
muscles could perform their work ; if the shattered 
nerves would recover tone and the fever cease re- 
curring, what more could I ask for? But the 
weak digestion, the little food we can persuade 
him to take, will not fortify the weak body. Each 
day, when I go to his little room and see him still 
lying there, the arms inert, only a thin, white, 



98 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

bloodless finger movingj the head fixed and im- 
movable on the pillow, the great eyes in the 
bleached and sunken face flashing a vivid speech 
to me, as they follow every movement in the room, 
I feel a heart-sinking ! Shall I never find him 
sitting up, even standing, or moving about the 
room and the ward, like others who have been 
brought in since my arrival? Of course, the 
victories will all be ours, as soon as the cold 
weather comes, for the cold of Siberia and Man- 
churia is the same, and of course the Japanese 
troops cannot endure that. These little rice-fed 
manikins in cotton clothes will be in sad plight 
when the north winds begin to blow. It is all very 
well for them, now that Manchuria is a blazing 
furnace deluged with typhoon rainstorms. They 
are used to this. Our soldiers will thrive on the 
hoarfrosts and snowstorms, huge, fur-clad, meat- 
eating creatures that they are. 

Watanabe set such a current of curio dealers in 
my direction that my little house is getting more 
attractive each day, and each day I wish more and 
more that Vladimir could see it. It is a solitary 
pleasure. The Japanese ladies who called, never 
noticed my Sotatsu screens, a tangle of flowers on 
gold-leaf grounds. The high military officer, who 
has twice called, accompanied by his Japanese- 
Russian interpreter, and has then talked bad Ger- 
man with me — save when we all three talked 



MY JAPANESE HOME 99 

Japanese together — paid no heed to my precious 
flower picture in the deep recess. Young Japan, 
who studies in Europe, is a graceless wight on 
the subject of his national art. He knows more 
of Von Moltke and Meckel, than of Korin or 
Sotatsu. 

It was a shabby little schoolmaster, in pathetic 
black broadcloth clothes, who made a ceremonial 
call on me, after my contributions to the Red Cross 
Society, who most appreciated my treasures. He 
drew in his breath, looked incredulous, and really 
did go down on his knees to my precious pictures — 
signed with that awe-compelling red circle and the 
dagger-stroke of Korin — to study the signature 
with microscopic closeness, to scrutinise the silk, 
its edges, and each detail of the mounting. All in 
silence. l^Qf^ 



CHAPTER XI 

AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 

Sunday, September 4th. 
T lAOYANG, the headquarters, is abandoned, 
-*-^ and Kuropatkin's whole army has re- 
treated to Mukden ! — from the strong place he 
has been fortifying for six months ! All are 
depressed, and suffering in mind, and O'Shige San 
told me on my arrival that all the big children 
were yakamashi (bothersome) to-day. Every 
wound is inflamed, every temperature is higher, 
every ragged nerve is straining. I have hardly 
known how to be cheerful before Vladimir's mourn- 
ful eyes, nor how to keep him occupied with other 
subjects, so that he may not talk of this Liaoyang. 
Vladimir sighs, shuts his lips tightly, and pitifully 
appeals to me: "How could he abandon such a 
place.? It is fortified by nature, and they were 
building forts and forts all around the circle of 
hills, when I first arrived there from Petersburg. 
I saw them twice again, the most splendid defences. 
It was impregnable by July. I would have held it 
then with 50,000 men for six months. Only a long 
siege could have taken it, if there had been any 

100 



AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 101 

spirit or sense in the army. How could they, how 
dare they abandon it and all the stores that were 
accumulating there?" 

Loris tells us the news, and all that he has to 
tell inflames the wrath of StafF-Colonel Grievsky, 
an old comrade of Vladimir's, a huge blond man 
from Kiev, whose hands and feet — in fact, his arms 
and legs — stick far out from the largest-sized Red 
Cross kimono they can find for him. 

"Remembering me in this," says Grievsky, 
thrusting out his bare wrists and looking down at 
the long display of ankles, "will Sophia Ivanovna 
ever speak to me when we meet again on God's 
earth, or in heaven, or in Russia, which is quite 
the same affair?" 

As for the white pastry cook caps which the 
Red Cross provides, our officers will not wear them 
at all. I suggest that they save their Red Cross 
gowns and caps for future use at fancy dress 
balls, and they scorn the suggestion. "Never! 
Never ! Never 1" they say. 

I urge these idle disconsolates to form a Matsu- 
yama club, and all dine together in Petersburg 
once a year to celebrate the triumphant peace; 
and they say : "No ! No ! No !" They do not wish 
to remember, only to forget, to blot out the 
memory of these humiliating days. When the 
peace comes, they want to see all Matsu- 
yama razed as flat as the Taku forts, and 



102 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

the chateau tumbled into the sea — its name 
taboo. 

Grievsky rages and thunders at the Russian 
enemies of Russia, as a rest from reviling America 
and England. The perfidy of England is an old 
story, but the defection of America rankles with 
all of us. Grievsky has thirsted to meet an Ameri- 
can and upbraid him with his country's baseness. 

He does not count the Protestant missionaries, 
who live here, and who are so good and kind to 
our sick ones, as enemies of Russia, nor blame them 
for being Americans at all. These religious ones, 
these American popes, are subjects of the King- 
dom of Heaven, he says. They are like people 
without an earthly country. They have put 
nationality behind them in their vocation, he says ; 
and he puts a thousand questions to the Americans 
about their government, their parhament, their 
elections. He startles them too by telling them 
that we Russians all regard their Commodore 
Perry as an interloper, a meddler. Commodore 
Perry should not have rushed in and opened up 
Japan as he did. It was for Russia to have done 
that. We had already begun. We had it in train 
at the very time. Trop de zele. 

Loris and Grievsky are of one mind on Russia's 
national policy. Both have always been violently 
opposed to the whole Manchurian adventure. 
Russia's true interests are in Persia and the 



AFTER LIAOYANG^S BATTLE lOS 

Persian Gulf, they say ; and all this digression to 
the frozen end of far Asia, all this Manchurian 
madness, has been time, money, and opportunity 
thrown away. Beginning with Mouravieff, they 
curse with fine frenzy all who have ever had any- 
thing to do with far Siberian affairs — De Witte, 
Hilkoff, Alexeieff, and Bezobrazoff. They detail, 
and relate, and repeat all that they know to their 
detriment; and all Trans-Baikalia, the Amur, and 
Ussuri are the damned provinces. 

"Had Trans-Caspia continued to occupy Rus- 
sian statesmen, had they remembered Peter the 
Great's admonition, we should long ago have had 
railways into Persia, across Persia to the Gulf, 
and Russian naval stations there, face to face 
with India. And then," says Loris, "Russia's 
'great idea' would be realised. But — we have no 
statesmen any* more — only court favourites and 
speculators. Since Alexander the Liberator's 
death, everything has gone worse; mediocrity on 
top, ability below, or — in Kavkaz and Siberia. 
Our brains are in exile. Petersburg is a madhouse 
where the lunatics themselves are in charge. And 
Nicholas ! Well — Nicholas is blind. Poor fellow ! 
He indeed rides in a perambulator still, with Marie 
Feodorovna pushing him." 

I remember, too, when Vladimir finally quitted 
the diplomatic service, or went on a long conge, he 
said: "I have no pride in serving the Russian 



104 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

government any more. The government is a self- 
willed, selfish woman-usurper, and a wolf pack of 
Grand Dukes. We are little better off than thei 
Chinese with their Empress Dowager. Nicholas 
and Kwangsu are autocrats in name only. UEtat 
just now is Marie Feodorovna, and I cannot be 
loyal to her. That is not being loj^al to Russia. 
If a Czar should rule again, I would serve ; if 
enemies rose, if war came, I would defend my 
country." 

Grievsky almost weeps, as he declares Persia is 
slipping from our grasp, and Tibet already seized 
by the English, while we are occupied with this 
miserable colonial war. 

"Now the chance of Persia is going; for, with 
Russia's longest arm busy with this colonial war 
in Manchuria, England will intrigue against us in 
Afghanistan and confront us in Persia. Lord 
Curzon is plotting, plotting all the time against 
us ; and it will take years for us to recover our 
lost ground. Ah ! Ah ! Marie Feodorovna and her 
circle ! Alexeieff and that creature Bezobrazoff ! 
They are Russia's worst enemies. They are the 
traitors. They have thrown us into this foolish 
war with Japan — and all about that cursed 
Manchuria for which no Russian cares — that," 
snapping his fingers like the crack of a whip. 
"Ah! Ah!" and he ground his teeth with rage, 
"This will cost us Persia and all our chance at 



AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 105 

India. What do we want with Manchuria? You 
and I even ? Did you ever hear any one cry for it 
in Russia? Was it not always a huge sort of joke? 
Military duty there a Httle better than the Cau- 
casus — until that Peking affair, when they all 
got so much loot. Ah! that was a chance! 

"And we! We! We endure heat, thirst, and 
privations in Manchurian camps and corn fields. 
We are wounded, mangled, crippled, made cap- 
tives, and dragged to Japanese prisons. And 
why? For what? Because Bezobrazoff has 
promised to Serge and Vladimir and Alexis, and 
Marie Feodorovna, and Alexeieff too, great money 
from their timber lands on the Yalu River. And 
what need could there be for this timber? What 
market for it, if there were not Port Arthur and 
Dalny. Who wants Dalny? Who made Dalny? 
Who else but De Witte, to make trade and give 
excuse for that damned railway? And who wants 
Port Arthur? Only Alexeieff to make himself 
Viceroy of the Far East and to kill De Witte's 
free city and trade port in the next bay. Ah-h-h ! 
villains, thieves, scoundrels ! 

"And who wanted this war? Who made it? 
What for? Alexeieff and his officers, who wanted 
promotions, decorations, contracts, loot of any 
kind! And his Novo Krai! The censor would not 
have let it live in Petersburg. But Alexeieff was 
censor. He was editor; he was all in all. Every 



106 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

day he threw down the gauge to Japan and courted 
war. Did not Paul Lessar warn him? Did he not 
implore and implore AlexeiefF to keep the pledges 
and evacuate Manchuria? 'Not now, not forcibly, 
defiantly,' he said. 'Do not rouse the world. 
Slowly, inevitably, in time, we shall of course get 
Manchuria,' said Paul; 'but do not let us get all 
the powers down on us for broken faith and broken 
pledges.' He begged, he wrote, he telegraphed, 
he sent couriers, urging Alexeieff not to put off or 
refuse evacuation; not to reoccupy places like 
Mukden and thereby rebuff America. He begged 
him, too, to stop the Novo Krai's recklessness, to 
be more cautious since all the East knew it to be 
his mouthpiece. And then Alexeieff himself wrote 
that thing in the Novo Krai, the V*?/ suis et j'y 
reste* article, and marked it, and sent it to Paul 
Lessar, as answer. Poor Paul! Poor Paul! To 
live for this ! to die by inches seeing it ! 

"Ah ! Scoundrels ! Scoundrels ! I wish all that 
Yalu and Port Arthur crowd were here. Here ! 
Here ! As I am here," he fairly roared, pounding 
his hand on the table. "They deserve it. Not I. 
Not I. Not your husband, either, Madame. We 
are the victims, the sport of their ventures of 
greed. Yes, greed." 

Poor Grievsky ! Such a frank, sunny, happy 
temperament, if it were not clouded by his suffer- 
ings of body and mind, his humiliation, and his 



AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 107 

fretting at this inactivity, when there is hard 
fighting and hard work for good Russians to do. 
Vladimir says that no one so loves a good fight for 
the sheer love of fighting as Grievsky. The bang 
of shot and clash of steel and smell of powder 
are more than food and drink to him. They are 
the wine of hfe, intoxicants. Grievsky in battle or 
skirmish is a very god of war and giant of bat- 
tles, electrified, intensified, his face illumined with 
exaltation, his voice a clarion that inspires the 
men. They were together years ago in Ferghana 
— ^Vladimir, Grievsky, and dear old Paul Lessar. 
There they knew Kuropatkin too. In these de- 
spairing times, it is a pleasure for Vladimir and 
Grievsky to turn from the present and live over 
the old, triumphant, Turcoman days. They had 
only victories there and — all the world was young 
then. Grievsky stayed on in Turkestan, and in 
Ferghana ; he built more railways and more forts, 
and laid out lines of canals; surveyed with the 
Pamir Boundary Commission, and, as he said, 
acted as guide and host for exiled Grand Dukes, 
explorers, scientists, and butterfly-catchers from 
all countries. We laugh at his accounts of the 
explorers who came to him wanting to explore 

Tibet. 

"Ah, Gott! I was only a forwarding agent, 
an innkeeper for the explorers. I ran an excur- 
sion bureau there in Ferghana. 



108 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

"It would have paid even to have built a railway 
to Lhassa, solely to accommodate the many gentle- 
men-explorers, the discoverers of an unknown 
country. I was 'Thos. Cooks & Sons, Limited,' for 
the 'Roof of the World.' There were all kinds, 
even women — all nations. They all wanted to go 
to Lhassa. Every fool was sure he would succeed, 
where other fools had failed. I got them their 
caravan leaders, and their servants, their animals, 
their stores, and I started them off. Oh! Speed 
to the parting guest ! as you English say. They 
never got to Lhassa, of course, although it was a 
dull season in Samarcand and Kashgar when I 
did not have two or more Lhassa excursions on my 
hands. And most of them returned to my shelter- 
ing arms ! Poor fluttering birds of search ! They 
had excuses, they had Tibetan teapots and tur- 
quoises, trumpets of thigh bones, and skull drums, 
and — much experience. And Lord ! What it 
must have cost them to go on their cold picnics ! 
Roubles, and roubles, and roubles ! Think of 
shivering in a tent with a cup of tea and tallow 
at your own command and at your own expense, 
when there is champagne in Paris for half the 
price ! Ah ! there are so many kinds of madmen 
running loose nowadays ! We saw all these madmen 
off with a last dinner, and they returned, hairy and 
hungry, dazed at the sight of a civilised table 
again. And God! How they could drink the 



AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 109 

champagne after a little of the Pamirs and Lop 
Nor! 

"There were all kinds — Germans in spectacles, 
with their specimen boxes hung all around them; 
and Frenchmen — let me not speak disrespectfully 
of our flat-chested, but richly-investing allies — 
and Englishmen ! Englishmen ! and Englishmen ! 
until I thought I should go mad; and they, those 
Johnnies Bulls ! they all came with letters to me ! 
To me! As if it were a deliberate joke. Bah! 
Those fellows in Petersburg did it on purpose. 
Those British spies told me that Prof. This and 
Dr. That, in Petersburg, had told them that I 
knew it all, and they sat and admired me, and 
opened their ears, all the valves in their ears, to 
hear what I should say. Curse their souls ! 

"I knew then they were only spies. And I ! 
Even I, ran with Mr. George Curzon! My Lord 
Curzon he is now. He, who would keep us out of 
Persia, and drive us out of all Trans-Caspia — if he 
could. He, who will not hesitate to undermine us 
in every way, now that Kuropatkin is tied up, 
hand and foot, in this accursed Manchurian mess. 
Lord Curzon ! The Viceroy of India ! Who could 
think it then? The pale, little university student, 
who was writing in the London Times, and wanted 
to find the source of the Oxus, and the course of 
the Pamirs, and the lord devil knows what not. 
Ah ! Spy ! Spy ! I could wring his miserable 



110 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

neck, if I could but see him now. Would I lend him 
my horses, my maps, my everything again? A 
Viceroy of India in disguise ! And I his tool, his 
fool ! Ah ! Ah ! Grievsky you deserve all this — 
this, the convict dress, the sentry at the door, the 
high fence ! And Mr. George Curzon should come, 
and see, to make the comedy complete !" 

Lord Curzon and Commodore Perry his equal 
abominations. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SEPTEMBER MOON 

Thursday, September 15th. 

'TT^HE chief -surgeon has said, that in time they 
-■' hope to let me remove Vladimir to my house, 
and continue his nursing there. He must give his 
parole that he will keep the same hours and re- 
strictions as the other officers in detention at the 
Town Hall. I shall be his jailer, and responsible 
to the Japanese Government for him. I nearly 
fainted with joy when I heard it, and Vladimir 
gave a great sigh of relief. 

"I shall see that garden then. And we shall 
live, Sophia. It will be a home. I shall never com- 
plain then. How pleasant it will be to leave all 
this, the bare walls, the sounding floors, the noisy, 
grumbling men ; to go to the clean, quiet, little 
Japanese house and live stocking-footed — to watch 
the goldfish, and the birds, and the 'morning face' 
flowers. I feel better now." 

The surgeon said: "I am recommending that he 
be isolated from the ward. He must have quiet, 
and be free from fretting and excitement. They 
talk too much, all these friends of his. As soon as 

111 



112 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

his wounds are healed, and he is out of his plaster 
casings, we can turn him over to you as his skilled 
masseuse. I have two cases now that I shall ask 
you to help the nurses with. In that way you 
will learn the treatment, and I can advise to the 
commander that we give the honourable colonel to 
treatment in a private ward, to make the room 
which we shall soon need at the barracks. 

"We are short of nurses, and short of inter- 
preters for all the sick ones who will arrive here 
this week, and if you will be so good as to go with 
the Red Cross ladies to Takahama to receive 
transports, you can help us very much. And 
afterwards, if you are not too fatigued, we may 
wish you to interpret a little for us at the bar- 
racks here. There are so many wounded coming, 
and the doctors and nurses are not speaking your 
language enough yet. You are much cleverer, 
Madame von Theill, in learning the Japanese than 
our people are in learning Russian. However 
have you done it? We have never known a 
foreigner to speak like you in only a month." 

To have Vladimir all to myself again, and nurse 
him back to health quietly in my own little villa ! 
To be alone by ourselves ! To speak without being 
overheard ! To have absolute quiet around us ! 
What joy that will be ! And to be allowed to help 
with our wounded Russians is a privilege indeed. 
How glad I am that I have taken Vladimir's ad- 



THE SEPTEMBER MOON 113 

vice and never asked for anything, nor complained 
of anything ! Now that I have not proved a 
nuisance, they will let me be a helper. How truly 
good and kind the Japanese are^ — ^as individuals ! 
But the people and their government are always 
two different things. Look at us! See Russia! 

The season seems going rapidly now, and with 
the changes in the face of nature, I feel that time 
is hastening as I want it to. The lake of emerald- 
green rice, that rippled in the warm breeze that 
day I rode up from Takahama on the toy train, 
is now a lake of golden yellow grain. 

Loris, who knows a little of peasant life and the 
growing of crops in all countries, has always some 
new fact in agriculture to communicate to 
Beletsky when he comes to see him, and Beletsky 
longs for the time when he can ride out and see 
the Japanese at work in the fields, caressing and 
tending each rice stalk individually. "We have no 
idea of work in Russia," says Loris, "of work as 
a fine art, of work lavished on the crops and the 
land for love of it. Our peasants plough, and 
plant, and reap mechanically, with their muscles 
only, with no more mind, feeling, comprehension, or 
soul than the horses that pull the huge American 
machines through our wheat fields. The Japanese 
lavish more work on a single crop, they do more 
working of the soil, more weeding and tending, 
more trimming and straightening to one grain 



114 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

crop than our peasants give to ten crops. They 
pet their sheaves of rice Hke children. They coax 
them, talk to them, pray to the gods for them, and 
bring charms from the temple to protect them; 
and carry the very first ripe ears to the temple 
as offerings. It is no wonder that the seed grain 
responds with its best. 

"It is the sight of a life to watch these Japanese 
in the fields. Work, work, work! Wade in the 
mud, grub among the roots, all day, every day. 
I only wish I could have watched the whole thing ; 
seen the rice sown in the seed beds and then trans- 
planted, but it was yellowing when I arrived. 
And the harvest ! What a sight ! All these dull 
blue figures among the yellow stubble ! And then 
the dooryard scenes, as they beat and winnow the 
grain in full view, in the open sunshine ! Bronze 
men and bronze women, with the sunshine on their 
fine bronze bodies. Ah ! it is superb. Consider 
Millet's draped peasants in their turnip fields ! 
Bah ! And we never understood, we never knew 
about these Japanese in Russia. The Japanese 
make their war over there in Manchuria just as 
they work these rice fields, thoroughly, intently, 
intelligently, with loving devotion all the time. 
Our mujiks might as well lay down their rifles now 
and go home. They will never conquer these 
people. Victory is not with us. Man to man, 
officer to officer, peasant to peasant, we are no 



f. 



THE SEPTEMBER MOON 115 

match for them. These are the people of the 
twentieth century, and we are of the eighteenth 
only. Ah ! Curse the luck 1" 

'<;:^ 'Qy «<::> '<;^ 

The dear little volunteer nurse, who attracted 
me so when the committee of ladies came to thank 
me at my house, is at the barracks on duty each 
alternate week, and often comes to speak to me, 
to inquire for Vladimir and to bring him a flower. 
Her husband is a son of the new daimio, and is 
an officer at the front in Manchuria. The other 
night we both stopped to admire a rosy young 
moon balancing on the ridge of the eastern hills. 
"Next week there is the moon-viewing night. You 
will come with me to see?" and I gladly assented. 

The next day she told me much about this great 
September moon ; told me as much as my limited 
and practical vocabulary could let me know of 
poetic things. It is the moon of moons, the best 
loved moon of all the year, and the poet's moon in 
Japan. I have watched my great white moon 
flowers in the moonlight for several nights; and 
later, from my balcony, have pushed the amados 
wider, to see the picturesque castle and the black 
pine trees swimming in silver air against a dark 
azure sky. But for this fifteenth night of the 
September moon, when the great disc is completely 



116 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

round, all Matsuyama gathers on the castle hill, 
or on the far hill across the railway track, to 
watch the moon rise behind the Dos:o hills. 

After dark she rumbled in under my gateway 
and carried me off with her. Anna's bewildered 
face gave me the sense of being off on an ad- 
venture, and my spirits took on such a leap of 
elation, as the kurumas sped through the streets 
and around two long sides of the moat, that I had 
forgotten all worry and trials as we ran through 
a long street of shops and came to the foot of the 
abrupt castle hill, darkly clothed with its ancient 
pines. We went up a stone staircase and steep 
paths through the trees, then up more staircases 
and tree-shaded paths, with the huriimayd' s lan- 
terns bobbing beside and before us like big glow- 
worm.s in the warm darkness. The moist fragrance 
of the pines, the soft voice of my little Red Cross 
sister, and the respectfully hushed voices of our 
attendants, all fell upon me with charm unspeak- 
able, and I was consciously happy. 

We came out on. the broad terrace that I have 
often looked up to wonderingly, and then we 
looked out, from high in air, over the city of 
dotted lights, and over the dark plain with 
shadowy hills beyond. Scores of people were sit- 
ting there on cushions and red blankets. A 
perambulating restaurateur had brought up his 
twin boxes, and from those magic treasuries had 



THE SEPTEMBER MOON 117 

distributed tea trays for all the company, and 
the moon-worshippers were amusing themselves 
with doll wafers and fairy cups of tea and other 
aesthetic imitations of real food, as it seems to us 
bulk-consuming, barbarian peoples. 

Towards Dogo, the mountain rim was more 
sharply cut against the dusky, violet-indigo sky, 
patterned with faint constellations. Over there, 
the moon was getting ready to rise; and when we 
had recovered breath and fanned ourselves cool, 
we went through a mediaeval gateway, cHmbed some 
broad stone steps, between the black walls of the 
old castle's barracks, turned a court and another 
gate, and came out on a long terrace — a hanging 
garden. 

There was a company of quiet Japanese people 
there, grave old men and quiet, shadowy women in 
dark kimonos, and they gave me, one by one, 
ceremonious greetings. They were cordial and 
kindly beyond believing. Each one, during the 
evening, came and made some second little speech 
of greeting; inquired for Vladimir and the sick 
ones at the barracks ; wished for their recovery and 
comfort, and told me some other pretty, picturesque 
thing about the moon-viewing custom. It took 
me all evening to put things together, and make 
out that I was the guest of Matsuyama's highest 
circle; that my little Red Cross colleague was a 
true daughter of a daimio in the highest sense, 



118 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

since she stays here to work for Ijo soldiers' 
famiHes, while her husband is at the front; and 
that nearly all the company was composed of the 
kinfolk of the two daimio families, who ruled this 
rich province before the Restoration. It was a 
"black" Vatican company, a gathering of the 
ancienne noblesse of the Faubourg St. Germain, 
there on the lyo heights, and the daimios' old 
poetry-teacher, in his Chinese-cut coat of dark 
gauze, his mitre cap, with long white beard and 
staff, looked like Jurojin himself. He only needed 
the spotted deer to complete the picture of the 
God of Wisdom, Learning, and Longevity come to 
life. 

We moved slowly along the high terrace. A 
wall on one side, starry space on the other; and 
the lights of the town glimmered as if they were 
but stars reflected in the dark pool of the rice 
plain far below us. 

We were somewhere above my own house, my 
tiny garden of camellia hedges, of moon flowers 
and asagaos; and by the outlines of the hills, I 
knew that a turn to the right would bring me over 
the barracks where Vladimir lay — Vladimir suff*er- 
ing in the stuffy alcove of his ward, with lights 
and voices, noise and confusion around his tired 
head and bruised nerves, and I here, high in the 
cool starlight with poets ! My heart sank with a 
guilty feehng, with a remorse for my being up 



THE SEPTEMBER MOON 119 

there to enjoy freely the fragrant darkness, with 
the cool shadow and silence of the castle walls and 
embankments beside me, in a company of soft- 
voiced poets. And they were Japanese poets! 
Ah ! Japanese ! Japanese ! My enemies ! Vladi- 
mir's assailants, and Vladimir's enemies ! Was it 
right for me to be there with them? Could it ever 
seem right for him to be there at the barracks, 
beaten, bruised, maimed, perhaps crippled for life, 
by these same people? Perhaps Colonel Takasu, 
himself, had captured him; perhaps lyo soldiers 
had clubbed him to unconsciousness, when he would 
not yield and surrender. Maybe Colonel Takasu 
was the officer whom he had resisted in arrest, for 
which they threatened Vladimir with a court- 
martial and the death penalty over there in Man- 
churia. 

But these wild notions left when we entered 
another deep gateway, and came into the court- 
yard of the citadel itself, and I could see straight 
above me the fantastic gables, set one astride the 
ridge line of the other, that I had so often admired 
from below. Then we went into the dark and 
echoing interior, to vast halls and galleries, half 
seen in the lantern light by which we climbed steep 
stairs to the first room of the great tower open 
on all four sides to the night sky. We climbed to 
a second story where the east-facing windows were 
pushed widep and we sat on cushions on the floor, 



120 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

and watched the outlines of the hills grow sharper 
and clearer against a dusky blue, silver-lighted 
sky. An electric flash came as the great yellow- 
white disc of the September moon first showed on 
the mountain's edge, and quickly the whole round 
splendour rose, poised on the fantastic peak, and 
soared up into the shadowy azure, the bluish, 
grape-coloured sky. "Ah ! Ah !" sighed my com- 
panions around me softly, with intense joy in the 
beauty and the sentiment of the scene; and I 
found myself swept with them upon the same high, 
exquisite plane of feeling and emotion. There was 
grave silence, the tap-tap of a tiny pipe, lighted 
without sound against the burning coal buried in 
the hibachi's ashes, the only break in the harmony 
of stillness. 

The great moon, not cold and silvery white like 
our frosty Russian moon, glowed golden and re- 
fulgent, glorious as the moon of Italy in mid-air, 
and sent down a mellowed daylight, first upon 
Dogo's clustered houses and tree masses, and then 
on the level of the golden rice plain, distinctly yel- 
low in the moonlight, cut with dark lines and divided 
by the broad white Dogo road. It was enchant- 
ment — a midsummer night's dream — old Japan — 
ideal, poetic Japan — and I a Philistine snatched 
up to this height by Heaven's favour, for my soul's 
expanding to this rare night's opportunity. I sat 
thrilled through and was soon choking with an 



THE SEPTEMBER MOON 121 

unreasonable melancholy and emotion; and, as 
from a trance, I came down from the heights of 
the soul, and found myself weeping in a company 
of Vladimir's enemies — and he, stricken and suffer- 
ing, somewhere in the long buildings showing 
dimly in the night-azure, Cazin landscape im- 
mediately below us. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE LIAOYANG MEN 

September 28th. 
A NOTHER day, I did my day's work in the 
•^ ^ Red Cross tents at Takahama, and from 
noon until four o'clock saw the wounded from 
Liaoyang brought ashore, fed, bandaged, and 
ministered to, until they were put in the little 
train. They were pitiful in their weakness and 
dejection; many of the rank and file not yet con- 
vinced that the evil little pigmies would not cut 
them in strips and torture them. The officers, 
poor fellows, were stung with chagrin, with 
humiliation unspeakable; and to many wounded 
pride was as acute a suffering as the shooting 
pains and throbs of agony in their wounded bodies. 
Hopeless, despondent, heart-sick, and suffering, 
they lay with their eyes closed, not caring to see 
the beautiful green hills and blue water around 
them, after the hideous bare hills and muddy 
shores of Manchuria. It was a pleasure to speak 
to these inert ones, and see the faces waken at 
sound of the Russian language. "Ah! God! 

122 



THE LIAOYANG MEN 123 

to hear my own tongue again, after these days 
and days ! Is this really Japan ? You are a 
Russian woman ! Where did you come from ? 
Are you, too, prisoner?" 

And when I told them about myself, they mar- 
velled greatly. They could hardly believe that the 
Japanese let me stay here and tend my wounded 
husband daily, or that I was safe. "Yes ! they 
have certainly surprised me, for they were kind to 
us all the time. We have been treated as their own 
wounded; and when we have groaned in the rail- 
way carriage coming down to Dalny, they have 
said, truly, that our own wounded Russians were 
no better off among our own people. Ah ! that 
railway ride was hardest ! How I wished they had 
bayoneted me on the field where they found me, 
as our Cossacks do. I expected that. I did not 
expect them to pick me up, and carry me to the 
surgeon, and dress my wounds ; feed and fan me, 
put a cigarette in my mouth and light it for me. 
Then a French-speaking interpreter came and 
asked me if I would like to go to the expense of a 
telegram to my family, lest they be alarmed from 
the Russian report of missing. It was all very 
strange, very surprising to me. And that they let 
you stay here is more surprising still. I don't 
understand these Japanese at all. I never heard 
of such Japanese before I came here.*' 

He wanted to talk more and all the time, but I 



IM AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

told the ladies a little of what he had said, and 
they eagerly took my place, to do more for him, to 
heap surprises upon him. 

It was too late that day for me to go to the 
barracks when I got back, but Anna had gone, 
and looked after Vladimir. The first of the new 
arrivals had reached their wards before she left. 
"No sleep to-night, barina,'^ said Anna. "They 
are all wild to hear the newcomers. And I do not 
think it is good news, because they are very still, 
and listen quietly to what the sick man says." 

It could not indeed be good news. It was the 
same sickening recital of stupidity, and blunder- 
ing, and hesitation — of reinforcements not ready 
in time ; of peevish, pettish officers abandoning 
strong places to spite and pay back the com- 
mander, and thus precipitating failure, ultimate 
flight. They had so nearly caused the capture, 
the inglorious surrender of the commander and his 
staff, that some of the wounded were only assured 
of Kuropatkin's safety, after they reached this 
hospital. 

The sick man told how the commissariat failed 
them and how they picked the millet heads, and 
ate raw grain for the two days of fighting. He 
held trenches on a hill that commanded the key to 
the Russian defence and the whole position. That 
night they were to crawl down for water, but the 
whole company crawled down and away ; scattered 



THE LIAOYANG MEN 125 

and refused to return; and daybreak saw the 
Japanese safely in occupation, without firing a 
shot. "I raved, I stormed, I cursed, I beat them, 
but it was only *NietI NietF I could not drive 
them, they were too ready to turn on me. Ah! if 
it were not for this getting killed, how our Rus- 
sians would fight ! 

"I sat down and wept, and only my servant, 
dragging me by main force, could make me realise 
that the Japanese were upon us. Upon us ! They 
were all around us ; and they bagged the last of 
my mutinous men, who ran into the arms of a 
flanking party that came out of the kaoliang, as 
if out of dense woods. So, here I am — a flesh 
wound in the arm and a bullet through the leg — 
wounds that will heal in a fortnight. But I am 
to stay here, in prison, until the end of the war. 
Stay here until Kuropatkin retreats to Lake 
Baikal ! Ah-h ! It is too much." 

"But," we all said, "we keep our courage up by 
counting on a speedy rescue by the Vladivostok 
fleet. Skrydloff's next raid will be down this west 
coast. We can only dream of our release, and of 
Russian victories on Japanese soil — a Russian 
occupation of Tokyo ! The loot of Tokyo, a 
richer prize than the loot of Peking. We will get 
it." 

"Never ! Never ! By all the saints, never ! 
There will be a Japanese occupation of Petersburg 



126 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

first. We can no more win a war against these 
cursedly clever generals, these intelligent armies, 
against these hard-working, incessantly-studying, 
scientific soldiers, than the Turcomans, with their 
flint-locks, could win against SkobelefF and his 
machine guns. Only a miracle can save us now. 
Skobeleff on his white horse, or Alexander Nevski 
will have to appear and head our columns to carry 
our flag back even to Liaoyang or the coal mines. 
What have we done but retreat ! withdraw and 
run ! Run ! and run faster still, ever since that 
day on the Yalu River? It has been one long 
story of stupidity, inefficiency, unpreparedness, 
shameful failure and defeat. The Japanese have 
landed armies where they chose, and gone along 
quite as they pleased; pushing our headquarters 
ahead of them — from Yinkow to Haicheng, to 
Liaoyang, to Mukden ! And how soon will we be 
driven out of that, and Harbin too? 

"And our generals shrug their shoulders, and 
say they are unprepared! Ach Gott! Unpre- 
pared ! What have we ever done in Russia but 
prepare? I have studied, and drilled, and prac- 
tised, and prepared for war all my life. What is 
the standing army, the conscription for, if it is 
not preparation for war? We were prepared on 
paper. Oh ! yes ! And have we not been getting 
prepared for this war every minute since the siege 
of Tien Tsin? Of what did all the casernes, and 



THE LIAOYANG MEN 127 

canteens, and messes, and clubs talk in Peking, 
that winter after the siege, but of the coming war 
between Russia and Japan? Every one in Port 
Arthur knew it. The Viceroy knew it. He 
counted on it. He told again and again how long 
it would last. He disclosed his plans confidentially 
every midnight. 

"And then Kuropatkin came out; and he 
looked over the forts in Manchuria, and he listened 
to AlexeiefF, to that sailor on horseback, who knew 
no more about the Japanese army establishment 
than he does of the Patagonian army, if there is 
one. Kuropatkin was slow, and he wanted to be 
sure ; and he asked to see the forts at Port Arthur, 
and they brought him maps, maps, maps. ''No,' 
said he. 'Come let us take a walk,' and that 
hot May day, he made them all climb to the 
Chinese wall, and walk over all that rough ground 
toward the west. While the engineers perspired 
and explained to Kuropatkin, the Viceroy was 
down in the cool palace. 'And now,' said Kuro- 
patkin, 'where is the fort "K".'^' 

" 'At your very feet, your Excellency. Where 
you stand is the site, and these are the plans — a 
lunette — a ' 

" 'Damnation,' says his Excellency, the Minister 
of War, 'show me no plans, no paper forts. 
Where are the guns.'* Eight-centimetre guns.f^ 
They left Kronstadt months ago.' 



128 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

" 'They are in the storehouses, below there, 
your Excellency.' 

" 'Very well,' he roared. 'When they are 
mounted here, we will call it a fort and talk of a 
campaign. You must be ready to defend before 
you attack. The war, when it comes, will not all 
be a quick descent upon Nagasaki and a gay 
march over to Tokyo. I miss my prophecy, 
if those little yellow devils do not make us a siege 
of Port Arthur that will come near to Sebastopol's 
siege.' 

" 'Pouf ! your Excellency. We shall wait until 
winter before starting the campaign. Then 
we can impose our will on the Japanese, and they 
can never come here. The north wind will fight 
for us.' And Kuropatkin sneered, looked at the 
Vice-Admiral, and walked down to the road. 
'Quelles hetises! Betes! ImhecilesI* I heard him 
say. 

"And now! What have we? The Viceroy and 
the commander at daggers' drawn, and each gen- 
eral the fighting foe of the other; each willing to 
see the enemy triumph rather than his rival score 
a success. The Viceroy and the commander 
wisely keep their headquarters on railway trains — ■ 
yes, actually, with steam up all the time. Even a 
locomotive at both ends of his train, and balloons 
fastened to the car roofs by this time, as the 
Japanese cartoons show. They both keep ad- 



THE XIAOYANG MEN 129 

vancing to the north, pressing on Harbin, just 
ahead of the Japanese. It is retreat, retreat, re- 
treat; sending the colours, and the artillery, and 
the supplies on to the north, and then racing after 
them. Sauve qui pent. 'Give me time,' says the 
commander, and they give it to him. *Soon we 
shall be winning great victories,' said the brag- 
garts in Liaoyang cafes in May; and now, it is 
September. The imperial navy has sunk more of 
its own than of the enemy's ships. And the im- 
perial army ! Not a victory yet !" 

With all that I myself helped to send out from 
Russia, I am distressed by the stories of hospital 
mismanagement. Liaoyang hospitals were unpre- 
pared for the wounded that came to them from 
Haicheng. There were no lamps, no candles, no ice. 
The Red Cross sister herself went into the city 
and bought lemons, and found the Red Cross 
stamps on the boxes — a gift sent out from Odessa ! 

With thirty Grand Dukes, the only member of 
the Imperial family at the front is Boris! Boris 
Vladimirovitch ! Boris ! with a vaudeville company 
of blondes to see the fun and the excitement of a 
campaign, to watch a battue of men instead of a 
battue of partridges ! 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE SHAHO MEN 

Wednesday, October 12th. 
A NOTHER battle is on, and we do not dare 
^ ^ to hope. The last prisoners brought in — 
picked up while reconnoitring near the coal mines 
at Liaoyang — have told us more of the terrible 
losses at Liaoyang, of the mad panic of flight, and 
the latest quarrels of the generals. Each general 
accuses the other of disobeying orders, of delay- 
ing reinforcements, of deliberately abandoning 
posts to ruin another's plans ; and each vows 
vengeance. All have appealed to Petersburg, and 
Petersburg bestows — not ribbons and crosses and 
orders — but blows and curses. Poor Nicholas 
weeps, they say, and is so melancholy and de- 
pressed, that only the little Czarevitch can make 
him smile. It is a dull, unhappy court. "Cannot 
my generals even win one battle .f"' cries poor 
Nicholas in despair. 

After Makaroif's death, Vladimir was called 
over to Peking at Paul's request, to inform him 
about the situation. They had their days un- 
broken and lived over again their time in the 

130 



THE SHAHO MEN 131 

deserts and the Pamirs. Both felt that it was a 
farewell visit. "I shall die of chagrin and humilia- 
tion," Paul wrote in May, after Zassalitch's dis- 
graceful failure on the Yalu River. "This war of 
Alexeieff's has nearly killed me. I have not 'long 
to live,' " were his farewell words to Vladimir in 
Peking. We too well know that each battle is 
another deathblow, each defeat brings death 
nearer to "Iron Wrist," as they called him in the 
Khana^tes. "How I wanted to see Vassili Verest- 
chagin !" Paul said. "I wanted him to come here 
and paint these Manchus and their palaces. 
There is nothing so gorgeous in the rest of the 
world. The old Empress, a tigress enthroned, is 
the greatest sovereign of twenty centuries. Eu- 
rope has no match for her. If she were a man, 
I could make her out. I can only threaten and 
frighten, and they tell me she does fear me. If it 
were not for the foreign women who have her ear, 
I could do more. I could do more." 

Poor Paul! How earnestly he wished America 
had never been discovered; his American confrere 
in Peking continually undid him. The Americans 
were of course hand in glove with the Japanese, 
and their ladies had an entree at the palace that 
our Russian women could not obtain. Poor Paul ! 
Poor Paul ! Although prostrate and handicapped, 
without social aids, he is a match for the whole 
corps diplomatique — and Vladimir had the hint 



132 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

from him that the Chinese would soon be brought 
into the melee, and then it would become an inter- 
national affair, and Japan would be put in her 
place by a coalition of continental powers. 

-^^ -^^ -^ii^ -^i^ 

Sunday, October 16th. 

The most glorious weather has come to us with 
the rice harvest; and the clear dry sunshine, the 
fields of yellow stubble, and the vivid patches of 
red lilies have made me think again and again of 
Italy. I am homesick for the villa on the Roman 
hillside. If I could only some morning step out 
on the terrace and turn the telescope on the Forum, 
and see how Boni's new excavations were going on ! 
or look over on the Pincian, or to the Medici terrace 
and see who was taking a morning ride, that would 
be joy! When I remember that splendid Roman 
outlook of ours — out over the great city valley 
from the heights — I feel smothered and oppressed 
living and moving about on the flat, flat level of a 
rice plain. 

The Japanese are making more temples ready, 
and have begun building a great barracks of 
officers' quarters to make room for all the new 
prisoners that are coming, and to prepare for the 
fall of Port Arthur ! They speak of it as if it were 
as certain an event in the near future as Christmas 
Day ; but all who come to us as prisoners tell that 



THE SHAHO MEN 13S 

the fortress is stronger than any one in Europe 
imagines. It has food for two years and a half, 
and ammunition for two years. The storehouses 
are overflowing, supphes stand in miles of goods 
trains on sidings there, and are heaped in moun- 
tains on shore. The building of fortifications has 
gone on night and day, and the commander can- 
not complain of forts on paper any more. The 
forts are almost touching on the hills surrounding 
the city, and an army can no more force an 
entrance between the forts, than a fleet can get in 
between the forts and mines of the harbour. The 
Japanese tried to take by assault all summer ; but 
now they are discouraged, and only keep up the 
appearance of attacks, and "save face," while the 
real fighting is further north — with our "General 
RuckwdrtsF' 

Women and children are still living at Port 
Arthur in safety, A shell hits the town now and 
then, but so far there is no panic. When the 
coldest weather comes, the Japanese will have to 
retire to warm barracks somewhere, and their fleet 
will run for the milder weather of Nagasaki. 
They, of course, cannot stand our Siberian win- 
ters; and Port Arthur can then lay in more 
provisions and send away the sick and the women 
and children. Port Arthur's assured safety is our 
great comfort in these days, our one cheerful sub- 
ject of talk. That and the little Czarevitch. 



134 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Sunday, October 23rd. 

The ten days' battle of the Shaho has ended. 
Kuropatkin has retreated, of course, and all my 
sick ones are worse. One or two are really becom- 
ing affected in mind. Our Slav temperament is 
prone to melancholy and dementia, and men like 
Grievsky, who are either at the height of joy or 
in deep despondency, do not bear up well under 
long-continued sorrow. Bismarck knew us when 
he said the Russians were feminine in character, 
too volatile, sentimental, and emotional. We are 
not the race for cold reason and pure logic. 
Grievsky and the others here argue, argue, argue 
by the hour, enthusiastically, excitedly, and then 
with frenzy, each in the support of his own 
opinions, blind and deaf to another's opinions, 
facts, or reasoning. Abstract discussions occupy 
their time, and from the frothings of these 
cleverest men, one gets an idea of what a Russian 
parliament would be like, if a benevolent Czar ever 
carried out the Liberator's intention. It took the 
Japanese a dozen years to learn the ways of con- 
stitutional government, and to arrive at a toler- 
able imitation of British parliamentary ways. We 
Russians are a different people ; slower to assimi- 
late ways so foreign to all the genius of our race. 
No, the parliament, the deliberative assemblage, is 
not for us. An exciting debate would send all our 
parliamentary leaders into hysterics and dementia ; 



THE SHAHO MEN 135 

a division would mean duels, assassinations, civil 
war — even barricades and street fighting. 

'<Qv». -<;> '^;:> <::^ 

Tuesday, October 25th. 

With the arrival of the wounded from Liao- 
yang, I took regular all-day work at the hospital, 
for a fortnight; going at eight o'clock in the 
morning, donning my nurse's cap and costume, 
and assisting and interpreting in the operating 
room or in the wards, as needed. I always had 
my fixed hours with Vladimir, and often I was so 
weary that I dropped off into little naps while I 
waited for our afternoon cup of tea. With such 
grand rounds of the barracks establishment, I 
always came to Vladimir f4ill of the day's news, 
news from the Russian camps and Petersburg. 

A Buriat Mongol was operated on to-day — 
a gunshot wound and some sword cuts on the right 
arm. The bone had been splintered and taken out 
and a metal substitute inserted. It is wonderful 
what these Japanese surgeons can do; and I am 
not yet used to the interest they show in the suffer- 
ing Russians. "Do good to them that hate you" 
has its illustration here, for the surgeon-in-chief 
labored over this Cossack of the ranks, as if he 
were a Japanese officer of the highest class. I fed 
some buckwheat gruel — the Japanese know it and 
make it well — to the poor fellow, after he was 



1S6 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

brought out to the air, and he told me his regi- 
ment, and that he had been servant to an officer, 
who came out from Petersburg to command his 
troop. The officer was Lyov Siemenoff , our young 
guardsman, mihtary attache of the embassy in 
Rome, my special pride and pet for three winters. 
He was such a splendidly handsome chap, so 
typically Russian, yet so free from the vices of 
his fellow guardsmen. He was daft on archae- 
ology and coins ; and he and Vladimir had 
rapturous times together hanging upon Boni's 
words and workmen; and never missing a Sunday 
evening at St. Catharina, with Donna Emilia and 
her archaeologists. 

Somewhere, in that awful millet field by the 
Shaho, Siemenoff was cut off from the rest of his 
troopers, and came out from the tall millet into 
the arms of the Japanese. He was wounded, and 
fell forward, his horse was shot and came down 
with him. "Barm«," the Cossack said, "those little 
Japanese devils were thick like midges — everywhere 
— everywhere — in the air, and they cut me down. 
When I knew myself again, it was dark; they had 
me stretched on a table and were cutting and 
trimming around my leg, and then I slept some 
more and woke up in a railway train. I never saw 
my master again. I suppose they left him dead 
there where he fell. Dead ! dead ! But when I am 
out again, I shall go and search for him and bury 



THE SHAHO MEN 137 

him. I shall know the place. I could easily find it, 
even if the crops were all cut." 

Lyov was the sort that Russia needs, and can 
so poorly spare. There are so few like him. 
Vladimir had known his family. The mother was 
a great beauty. The father went out on active 
service with Skobeleff under General Kauffmann; 
and then afterwards went to the Balkans with 
Gourko, and was killed at Gorui-Durbrik. When 
Lyov was in Rome, we always had the fiction of 
hunting a nice English "Meess" for him; and 
many a bouquet of j^oung beauties have I gathered 
at my table and for little dances, under the plea 
of marrying Lyov off well. 

"You see," he said, "the one path to success 
nowadays is to have an English or an American 
wife. The English I know a little more about ; 
but America is too far off, and we hear such 
strange stories. So, I think, if it is the same to 
you, Sophia Ivanovna, I will forego the American 
beauty and her greater chicness, and continue to 
seek out my adorable 'Meess.' " Then, of course, 
he fell madly, frantically, Slavically in love with 
an American who would not love him, and next 
with an English girl from Canada, which is 
America. A goddess of beauty she was, with a 
manner and style not one of our Grand Duchesses 
could equal. She ordered men about, and they 
obeyed, not meekly, but eagerly, frantically. 



188 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Even Englishmen fetched and carried, and waited 
on her. "I think she hypnotises me," one heavy 
Briton said. "I shall not be surprised any time 
to find myself tying her adorable shoe laces, black- 
ing her smart little boots, even." The divine 
mademoiselle, ^'la belle Canadienne,** for a time 
seemed to listen to Lyov ; and then, all of a sudden 
Lyov was plunged in melancholy, left Rome, and 
went back to the Garde a Cheval. We were soon 
startled with the announcement of her marriage in 
London, to Count Foresta, an Italian, who was 
all well enough perhaps as a parti — a good title 
and estates, mediaeval castle, and all that — but a 
poor second, as man for man, to Lyov Siemenoff. 
And now, Lyov is dead! Killed in battle, like his 
father before him. The Forestas were living on 
one of their estates near Siena, awaiting an heir, 
when the Conte came down to Rome for the 
cavalry rides, and, in doing some of those mad 
Italian rides down steep banks, was killed. 



CHAPTER XV 

IN KAKI TIME 

Thursday, October 2Tth. 
ALL the kaki trees are hung now with their 
jr\. gorgeous, golden fruits, and they add the 
last touch to the mellowing landscape of ripe 
autumn. While nature sings this rich melody, and 
all the earth looks peace, our wounded continue to 
arrive in heart-breaking numbers. We continue 
to hear news from our own people, news direct 
from headquarters, and also the last news that had 
come out to Manchuria from Petersburg. 

Vladimir shows a real improvement now that 
there is an end to the suffocating heat and damp- 
ness. He sits up a few hours each day, one arm 
free from plaster casings and resting on a pillow. 
Poor, feeble, shrivelled, dead-looking arm that it 
is, with the puckered scars, and stretches of 
hideous, thin skin that has so newly formed and 
healed. The other arm is in plaster for another 
week, the knee is rigid, immovable ; but I am now 
such a skilful masseuse that a Stockholm institute 
would give me a degree. I rub and rub, and work 
the poor paralysed muscles and broken nerves by 
the hour, and now I regularly attend on Vladimir 

139 



140 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

as professional masseuse^ after the surgeon sees 
him in the morning, and again for a last hour, 
before I leave in the afternoon. In this way, my 
whole day goes by, passed in the barracks ; and I 
have no need for lessons or any devices for passing 
the time. I have little time for my garden, or 
hardly for curio buying any more. I see Madame 
Takasu and the American sister of charity only 
when they are on duty in their week's turns at the 
hospital, bandaging, feeding, changing, and bath- 
ing the patients, and tidying the wards. It is 
always a wonder to me how these two quiet, delicate 
women, with no previous training or experience, 
can rise to the emergency of these war times, and 
stand up under this heavy hospital work. But 
then, I never could have supposed that I myself 
could endure such things, could even look upon 
such raw and gaping wounds as I have washed, 
and helped to dress and bandage. Here, I wash a 
mujik^s face, as naturally, without thought of the 
strangeness of the proceeding, as if it were the 
face of one of my little nephews. Yesterday, it 
was a poor Siberian Cossack, with a face and a 
shock of hair like any wild animal, whom I made 
ready for the surgeon. A piece of shell had struck 
his back; had gouged a hole as large and deep as 
a wash-basin, down to the very bone, and his 
sufferings were acute. He moaned and looked at 
me, with the piteous eyes of a dumb beast. 



IN KAKI TIME 141 

Human life seems so cheap, when one considers the 
thousands who lay dead on the Liaoyang plain, 
and the tens of thousands who marched away, 
that one wonders if it is worth while, if it is merci- 
ful, to rescue such a wrecked and battered piece of 
humanity, who never can be useful, strong, or 
sound again. And then I think of Vladimir and 
of the man he calls the ^'Grand Priwy** the hospital 
patient who is beyond all rivalry in the number of 
his personal casualties — that sailor from the 
Varyag, who had one hundred and forty-two 
wounds in his body ! That many splinters and 
bits of shell, some as fine as bird shot, had been 
driven into him. They picked the pieces out one 
by one, cured him, and sent him off. 

With these disasters in Manchuria it is now 
plain that we shall spend the winter here. I shall 
see my camellia hedge in bloom after all. I have 
lived on from day to day in such absorption in the 
one thing — Vladimir's progress — that I have for- 
gotten all outside affairs. I had talked vaguely of 
going to Kobe for stores, for necessaries for my- 
self and Vladimir, but finally felt I could not leave 
him for even three days. Anna went with the re- 
turning French Consul, bought everything, and 
returned in the charge of one of the professional 
guides, with such a mountain of boxes that we 
were put to it for a place to stow them at first. 
Every one wanted shopping done in Kobe, and 



14S AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Anna had shirts, pajamas, overcoats, dressing 
gowns, smoking jackets, and such things made to 
the trunk full. Vladimir is cheered, I am sure, by 
his quilted gown, and his fur slippers, and new 
bamboo lounging chair, and he.wears now the look 
of respectable invalidism. I affect to shake him 
that he does noi; hurry faster to get well, that I 
may have him under my own roof for the 
Christmas. 

And that roof ! Alack and alas ! What a time 
I have had with it ! Anna brought down stoves 
from Kobe; iron ones made in America, and the 
imitation of them made in Tokyo, and also stove- 
pipes for all. I thought I had only to employ the 
workmen and show them where to put them. But, 
ah me ! there was the landlord to reckon with ! I 
had said nothing about putting up foreign stoves 
when I leased the house in July ! Bon Dieu! 
who could think of stoves then! The landlord 
was sure it would set his house afire to put stoves 
in, and that it would dry and shrink the exquisite 
woodwork, until there would be cracks and 
draughts everywhere. For my own comfort, he 
begged me not to use foreign stoves. Finally, 
through the help of the Protestant missionaries, 
who had stoves and yet never burned the houses 
down, I won over the old obstructionist — at an in- 
creased rental, of course, to cover fire risks. 

Two of the suspected sick officers are now very 



IN KAKI TIME 143 

plainly on the verge of insanity, if not wholly in 
that condition. One lies on his cot with the blanket 
drawn over his face, and refuses to speak or eat. 
I have been called twice to help coax and humour 
him into taking his food, and after a childlike 
acquiescence, he covers his face again, and lies 
silent by the hour. At night, he mutters under 
his blanket, or parades the ward, lifting the cur- 
tains and walking into each room to count the 
people there. Vladimir has had two terrible shocks 
by waking in the darkness to feel a presence in the 
room, and to know by whispered mutterings that 
it was the lunatic at large in the night. We spoke 
to one of the young doctors about it, but he only 
giggled, thought it was funny, and said he would 
ask the chief-surgeon to have these dangerous men 
isolated, or at least locked up at night. The other 
man has the uneasy excitement and the glittering 
eyes of one who might become dangerous at any 
moment ; and I am thoroughly unhappy at having 
Vladimir, weak as he is, in such surroundings. It 
does not promise a nerve cure, and fate could not 
have done anything worse than to send those two 
unguarded lunatics into his ward ! Ah ! if I could 
only take him to my little house ! If I could only 
take him away, away, far from Japan — over to 
America — anywhere — where I could keep him 
away from this atmosphere of war — these sights 
and perpetual reminders of battles and, worse yet, 



144 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

of defeats ! Why not release this poor battered 
wreck of a man now, as much as the seventy aged 
and crippled Russians they turned over to the 
French Consul a few weeks ago? He can never 
fight or harm them again. He is a non-combatant 
hereafter. 

"'O ''v^ '^si^ '^^ 

Sunday, October 30th. 

To-day it is admitted that the Japanese have 
again captured the mountain that looks down upon 
Port Arthur. The slaughter has been awful; 
worse, Loris says, than when it was captured and 
recaptured by the two forces in September — when 
one side of the hill was blue with the bodies of 
dead Russians, the other side brown with the dead 
Japanese. They seem to love to talk of these 
things of horror there in the hospital; to dilate 
on trenches heaped with dead, and fields soaked 
with blood ; and Vladimir is fed on horrors every 
hour that I am not with him. 

Why will they not let me take him out to my 
house.? We will not run away. The police may 
watch us. We could not possibly get off this island 
of Shikoku, if both were agile and active. Their 
caution is absurd. If it were not for Vladimir im- 
ploring, and the Consul's advising me not to do 
anything just yet, I should talk seriously with the 
chief-surgeon and see, if by appeal to Tokyo and a 



IN KAKI TIME 145 

little Legation help, we could not get something 
granted in such an exceptional case. It is so hard 
to wait and wait, and see Vladimir grow worse, or 
arrested in his recovery. He will never be able to 
leave the barracks, if he is to be kept there in a 
ward of restless, nervous men forever arguing and 
talking and harping on their woes. 

On these perfect autumn days it means much 
for the officers in town to forego their long walk 
and come here to the hospital to see the sick on 
the two days of the week when general visitors are 
allowed. These are sad travesties of our "at 
home" days at Petersburg, for in their Red Cross 
gowns and makeshift uniforms, the ward has 
rather the look of a fancy dress ball, but it is a 
comfort for us of common woes to sit around a 
samovar and maintain some semblance of our 
social traditions. 

I must say that this year's experience has Rus- 
sified me beyond all measure, and intensified my 
patriotism, my loyalty, and all my race instincts 
on the Muscovite side. As with all whom I know 
of mixed parentage, my Russian traits, Russian 
leanings are strongest. The Russian blood dom- 
inates. No war of England's, not that unhappy 
Boer war, has touched more than the edge of my 
nature ; while this war, from the first shot at Port 
Arthur, has fired and roused to life everything in 
me. It was instinct for both Vladimir and me to 



146 AS THE HAGUE OKDAINS 

instantly rush to Petersburg when Russia was 
attacked — Vladimir to volunteer, to push for, to 
insist upon active service, and I to see what I 
could do for the cause, for the wounded, for the 
soldiers' families. 

In Petersburg, they continually taunted me 
with being English in my sympathies, with being 
pro- Japanese ; and there were many, many un- 
pleasant incidents. Here, when Vladimir and I 
argue for moderation, for patience on the part of 
the reckless officers who want to quarrel with their 
guards and interpreters, and threaten to escape; 
when we try to explain things or put them in 
another light, to prove to them how really kind 
and considerate the Japanese are to us, how gen- 
erous are the intentions of the regulations that 
petty officials distort by their cramped mental 
vision — then these brother horios upbraid us. 
"You take the side of the enemy, Sophia Ivan- 
ovna. But you and Vladimir are not true Russians 
— you are foreigners. You have lived all your 
lives outside Russia. Your country is the Riviera, 
or England — you are subjects of Albert of 
Monaco, or Edward VII. No, not quite that. 
Vladimir has served his country well, and you — 
yes, you too. Ah, I take it back. I prostrate 
myself in penitence, and we all know that you, 
Sophia Ivanovna, have saved us from many follies 
and disasters here." 



IN KAKI TIME 147 

Grievsky is now in high spirits and thinks he 
reads in all the Japanese faces a depression at 
their failure to reduce Port Arthur — a reaHsation 
of the impossibility of that attempt. 

"Viterbo and Kondrachenko ! Those are our 
only generals now. They have planned, they have 
made the fortifications at Port Arthur. They have 
made it the strongest fortress in the world. I was 
Kondrachenko's senior. Now he outranks me — 
he must be a general now. Every month in that 
siege counts for a year's service, and soon even 
my own nephew will outrank me! Ach Gott! 
What fighting is there there, now! And I, no 
part ! I am fast aging towards my retiring pension 
here. In prison ! Here ! Here ! On a httle island 
in Japan ! Japan ! Japan ! What was it ever to 
me? Have I ever wished for it? Even to see it? 
What craziness this whole Manchurian adventure ! 
De Witte and his cursed railroads ! Alexeieff and 
his cursed empire of the Far East ! Bezobrazoff 
and his cursed intrigues and Korean forests ! For 
them, for their schemes, I am here, here, here!" 
And down comes that terrible hand. 

-Qs, -<:> 'N^ ^^:> 

Monday, October 31st. 
Esper Petroff appeared yesterday, and in a 
dazed way greeted us all. "I came to see you, to 
find you and Vladimir, but I cannot beheve yet 



148 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

that it is really you. It is too strange. I have 
been dazed. I have doubted half my senses ever 
since I started for Manchuria. I continually 
wonder if I am awake. It has been such a proces- 
sion of undreamed of and impossible things, ever 
since I began my 'military promenade' across Asia. 
I waved my hand and said, 'To Japan !' when I 
left. And it was true — I came — to Japan direct 
— by express. I only stopped long enough to 
report at headquarters, and be assigned to OrlofF's 
command. And then, I walked straight to the 
arms of the Japanese. 

"I saw Anna PashkofF, as I came through. She 
is doing great work, good work, taking the sick 
as they come from Harbin, and she is enlarging 
her kitchen and hospital all the time. No one else 
can get lumber, workmen, supplies — but she does. 
She rages, storms, commands ; she scolds the 
generals, and swears at the colonels, telegraphs to 
Alexeieif, to Petersburg, and to Tsarskoe Selo, if 
she doesn't get what she wants. She is the Vice- 
roy, the Autocrat of Trans-Baikalia. — Magnifi- 
cent ! She went down on the train with us to 
Mukden to get some general orders issued by the 
commander. 

"Mukden is a strange headquarters. All this 
war is strange, anyhow. It is not like the Balkan 
campaign. There is no imperial camp at Mukden, 
with the sovereign driving to the field every day, 



IN KAKI TIME 149 

and lunching in sight of the operations. Ah! 
those were days at Plevna ! We have no Skobeleff 
now, either. There are none like him now — only 
such generals as he fought against in Ferghana — 
the thieves and speculators of the supply depart- 
ment. Skobeleff fought that crowd to the finish 
in Ferghana, and they fought and finished him 
afterwards in Russia. They are ruhng again 
now, with no Skobeleff to oppose them. 

"They saw to it that he never got a promotion, 
a command, nor a chance again for years. It was 
only chance, an accident, that put him in the front 
line at Plevna. After that affair, Alexander 
Nicholaivitch saw that the clique of arijiy thieves 
did not run Skobeleff to the rear. These Japanese 
generals are something like Skobeleff. Their army 
is all a 'Sixteenth Division.' Oh ! don't speak of it. 

"Now, Skobeleff in a new white uniform on his 
white horse was a picture for any soldier to 
worship and go wild over. He fired the imagina- 
tion. He appeared from the smoke of a battery, 
all shining white, like an apparition, like a vision 
of St. George or St. Alexander Nevsky. Now, 
there is no powder smoke. No Skobeleff. No 
heroic figures such as there used to be. The gen- 
erals do not have al fresco luncheons with their 
staff on the hillside, and do not watch the attack 
with field glasses, as if they were at the opera. 
Oh, no! They hide in bomb-proofs and galleries. 



150 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

and listen to telephones to know what is going on. 
The romance, the picturesqueness, all the theatri- 
cal pageantry of war is gone. It ended in '78. 
SkobelefF was the last general worth putting in a 
picture. We have a fat admiral holding a tele- 
phone receiver, to personify the 'Soul of War' and 
the 'Spirit of Battle' now. Ugh ! 

"This war ends everything that could bewitch 
the imagination. It is all mathematics and 
mechanics now; plain killing, slaughter by equa- 
tion and cube roots, by high angle and logarithms. 
Nevermore will our troops march to battle in 
parade position, with bands playing, the priest 
leading, carrying the crucifix to bring blessings on 
our cause. The last of that was with Zassalitch 
on the Yalu. No, no ! Without Zassalitch. He 
was in a cart driving frantically away from the 
Yalu. He is a specimen of our generals. 

"Now, I suppose, we will have to turn to and 
study, and work and drill, and pass examinations 
like those cursed Germans. The Germans ! The 
Germans ! They are at the bottom of all our 
troubles in this war ; even if they did not en- 
courage the Japanese, like the English; nor put 
up the money for it, like the Americans. I always 
expected us to go to war with Germany next. No 
one ever thought of Japan. SkobelefF always said 
there would be a war with Germany, greater 
than our Turkish war, or the Franco-Prussian. 



IN KAKI TIME 151 

He said war was Inevitable between the Slav and 
the Teuton. One or the other, Pan-Slavism or 
Pan-Teutonism, would rule the continent. And 
German officers have been boasting all these years 
that they had conquered Austria and France, and 
that Russia would come next. Bah ! Pan-Slavism 
dragged us into the Turkish war, and what did 
we gain? Some promotions — yes; but death, crip- 
ples, taxes ; and then England cheated us out of 
Constantinople. Yes, and Bismarck helped her 
do it; and now, the Kaiser continually gets the 
ear of Nicholas, and what happens? No good, I 
can tell you. William of Hohenzollern hates us, 
as he hates the French. Only he is afraid of us. 
No, I don't know that he is, since our army and 
our navy are both the laughing-stock of all the 
world. It is that French alliance that the Kaiser 
hates so. That alliance has been our greatest 
calamity." 

"Oh, no !" I burst in on this sad philippic. 

"Yes, it has. Without the frantic adoration of 
that most enlightened people of Western Europe, 
we Russians would not have been so complacent at 
the ignorance and backwardness of our people. 
That French courtship set the autocracy the 
more firmly in their pleased self-sufficiency. It 
put back progress, really. It showed Russia she 
had nothing to fear from the powers or public 
opinion of Europe. And then the French money ! 



15g AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

The millions and millions of francs ! Where are 
they? One loan is borrowed; and then another 
loan is needed to pay the interest due. Haut 
finance that, surely ! Oh ! great is De Witte, and 
Wishnegradski before him! What can he show 
for the French millions? Of a truth there would 
never have been this war if it had not been for 
those French loans. And if anything happened, 
and the French wanted their money back, I sup- 
pose we would be like Turkey, with an international 
board to manage our finances. I suppose that is 
what is ahead of Russia, after this year's downfall 
and disgrace. And yet, see what a proud place 
we held a year ago ! The foremost power in 
Europe ! The greatest military power. And 
now? Under the chief command of a thick- 
waisted, short-winded admiral-viceroy we have lost, 
lost, lost — every battle, every engagement and 
skirmish, all the affairs of outposts. Never a vic- 
tory. Only General RilcJcwdrts! General Ruck- 
wdrts in command. And Russia ! Great Russia ! 
— has come to this !" 

Silence fell. No one spoke; and after a few 
puffs, Esper began again: "I suppose we will re- 
form the army after this. We will have to. Then, 
belonging to the Guards or any of the crack corps 
and standing well socially in Petersburg, will not 
stand with the examining boards. Those of us 
who are blockheads will be weeded out and set to 



IN KAKI TIME 153 

guarding wells and canals in Trans-Caspia. I 
don't know that they will change much in regard 
to the men, the rank and file — except to give the 
poor beggars better food or more pay. They will do 
very well as they are — Kanonen-f utter, Kanonen- 
futter. I don't take all this sentimentalism about 
the man who carries the rifle. There's socialism 
in it; and all these great ladies of the Red Cross 
washing the mujik^s wounds and binding up his 
broken leg, is rot. A soldier is just a soldier, a 
machine to load, aim, and fire ; to shoot and get 
shot. I don't think of him as a man ; of each unit 
in a long line of thousands in the same uniforms 
as a man, a human being, a person like myself, 
my relatives, my friends, my brother officers in 
front of these lines. No, all this 'brotherhood of 
man' sentimentality is rubbish. A soldier is a 
munition of war merely, like the cannons, the 
rifles, the ammunition, the horses. So many 
thousands of each article go to make an army. 
It is quite the same which is the first on the list. 

"You do not think of each individual unit as a 
man, a brother, an immortal soul, when you see 
a company of these cursed little khaki-clad 
monkeys drilling around here, do you? I think 
not. Oh! that I might never see khaki colour 
again ! All Manchuria is khaki colour — dead, 
dull, dusty brown. And I suppose we, too, will 
soon be in khaki, like the English, and like the 



154 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

American attaches we had with us. Khaki! 
Khaki ! all the time at the headquarters mess. 
And all the Japanese a wriggling mass of khaki, 
like a ripe millet field moving. The Japanese 
soldiers are all khaki colour, except their eyes and 
teeth. I looked at Kuroki well, when he rode by 
to inspect the prisoners. Well, he was all khaki; 
all of him, clothes, boots, and even his horse. It 
made me bilious, jaundiced. Ugh! All the earth, 
the stubble, the standing crops, the dead millet 
stalks, the mud houses, the Chinese peasants in 
them, and also the bare hills. Oh! everything was 
khaki colour ; and when it subsided, we Russians 
were khaki colour, too — faces, clothes, hair, caps 
— ^all coated an inch thick with the infernal yellow- 
bi'own dust. 

"That khaki reminds me too much of the Eng- 
lish at Peking, in 1900; and of those outrageous 
Americans, who just smiled at us whenever we 
tried to go a little ahead of them on the march 
to Peking. They are too smart, those Americans. 
I wish Germany would thrash them well and take 
the blague out of them. I would like to see the 
English and the Americans fight a war a 
Voutrance. Then there would be peace in the 
world, and freedom for the other nations of the 
earth. Those two stand in the way of everything. 
It is these two, and their 'open-door' nonsense 
about China, that brought on this war, anyhow. 



IN KAKI TIME 155 

They put Japan up to fighting, and they will 
profit by it more than Japan, their little cats- 
paw." 

<::^ ^xix 'Cv ^^^ 

Tuesday, November 1st. 

That silly boy M has tried to escape again, 

and only wandered about for the night in a paddy 
field over the hills. Of course, there is no disguise 
for a tall foreigner here ; the country people would 
not hide a horio in their houses for any sum of 
money ; and if he had reached the bay and found 
a boat, where could he row to? where get food or 
water? It is such childish foolishness to try to 

escape; but M said he could not stand the 

confinement and monotony ; anything was better 
for a change. He had been deprived of liberty 
and confined to his own temple and graveyard 
compound for a previous attempt to escape. Now 
he is condemned to six months' imprisonment ; and 
he is taken to a veritable prison, a place for lock- 
ing up criminals, and is put in a cell, with none of 
his own people to speak to. Vladimir says it is 
unaccountable that the Japanese did not shoot him 
at this second attempt. In any other army, it is 
the rule. 



CHAPTER XVI 

"LA VEUVE ANGLAISE" 

Wednesday, November 2nd. 
^C/ESTERDAY we had a charming visitor — 
•^ the Enghsh widow, who has given her serv- 
ices to the Japanese Red Cross Society in Tokyo. 
She nursed Enghsh soldiers in the Boer war, and, 
coming out at the opening of this war, has rolled 
bandages v/ith the court ladies in Tokyo, and 
visited regularly at the hospitals there, to relieve 
the nurses and amuse the patients. She was like 
an apparition from another world, as she came into 
our ward in her mourning robes, with the white 
halo, the white collar-band and cuffs, as immacu- 
late as if in London that minute. My eyes rested 
upon her, fascinated, and then the chief -surgeon 
passed her over to me. The soft English voice 
was music to my ears; the very sight of her was 
refreshment after my long routine of unbroken 
days among nurses, doctors, kimono-clad patients, 
and others in parts of their uniforms. 

Grievsky ruffled like a porcupine when he saw 
her, was stiff, stolid, and barely courteous, I after- 
wards told him. "But oh! Those English!" he 
exclaimed. "Must they follow me, haunt me even 

156 



"LA VEUVE ANGLAISE'' 157 

here? Ach Gott! All their tourists in pith 
helmets, with red guidebooks, will come next. 
Sightseeing ! Mj God ! The eight remarkable 
views of lyo province ! And we, the horios, are 
one of them. All of them, I might think, the way 
some of these old Kakamahis on the roads stare at 
me — stare at me with their back teeth ! their 
palates ! their vocal chords ! Ah, me ! I have 
come to this — to be a curiosity ! An animal in a 
cage ! A monkey at the Zoo ! A Russian bear in 
captivity !" And the usual bang on the table con- 
cluded the monologue. 

Our English visitor left her niece at Hiroshima. 
And her niece is the Countess Foresta ! The 
Contessa has married, buried husband and child 
and mother since I saw her, and is now travelling 
with an aunt in Japan. The Contessa had a sad 
headache from going so rapidly through six miles 
of hospital wards at Hiroshima the day before, 
and had remained there, as her aunt had to leave 
at daylight on the precise day as prearranged by 
the Japanese officials who accompanied her to 
Matsuyama. I begged her to remain another day 
and to telegraph for her niece. I offered my house, 
and the chief-surgeon urged her to accept. 

I must have come in like a whirlwind in my great 
excitement, for Vladimir turned in surprise. I sat 
down weakly, in an access of fear lest Vladimir 
should denounce me for what I had done, the 



158 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

complications I had deliberately pulled down out 
of a clear sky. 

"Oh ! Sophia ! Sophia ! why will you meddle 
with such things ! Am not I, and my forty-two 
wounds, and three broken bones, enough, without 
your dragging two broken hearts into the scene? 
You have begun it ! Now what will be the end ? 
Can you foresee it? Those two may only denounce 
you, when you have brought them together. Let 
well enough alone. Don't try to control fate, to 
direct destiny. You have how many guest-rooms 
in your spacious villa? And what will you do 
when you get la belle here?" 

"Do?" I cried. "Heavens, but you are dense! 
Is it so long since you were young, Vladimir? 
Do? What did you do, that summer you met me 
again at Yalta? Did you need phrase-books to 
carry on conversations? If I remember, you" — 
and Vladimir pulled me down and gave me a lover's 
long kiss. "Yes, that is just what you did. That 
is what I expect Lyov to do, precisely. And then, 
all will be settled." 

<:::>' <:^ ^^k^ -^^ 

Friday, November 4th. 
I went to the station to meet the Contessa. I 
think we were both impressed with the strange- 
ness of our meeting in this way and here — la belle 
having run through the whole gamut of a woman's 



"LA VEUVE ANGLAISE" 159 

soul-existence since I had seen her. She had lost 
husband, child, and only parent, within the brief 
time — a whole chapter of tragedies. Sorrow has 
chastened and softened her beauty, given it an 
appealing, a more human quality. 

After the banalities of formality, she indicated 
her maid and guide ; and we walked on through the 
sunset light through the temple grounds — past 
Dairinji, and into the narrow street that leads to 
the moat. With the side of my eye, I took in the 
supple, graceful figure in severe black, that walked 
with me, and — worldling that I am — it was with 
the joy of long deprivation that I noted the per- 
fect tailoring, the touches of modernity in the 
simple costume. It was my own world, my own 
kind again ; after this queer life here in a far 
province, seeing no foreign women for days on 
end, save Anna in her cotton frocks. 

"Ah," cried la belle, as we came out of the little 
street of book and paper shops to the corner of the 
moat, with the chateau high above us, just show- 
ing its black gables against the rose and gold sky. 
"This is the ideal. This is my castle in Japan, 
that I have read and dreamed of. I must go up 
there. None of their other 'shiro's and gosho's 
come up to this for placing. And what a dream 
of a trip it is over here from Ujina ! I sat in the 
pilot-house all the way. I could not lose a minute 
of it. Switzerland ! Italy ! Japan ! I am torn 



160 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

to tell you which one is the most beautiful country 
on earth. Just now, it is this ! It is this ! It is 
this ! And so strange ! So different from all the 
other countries ! I always wanted to come here. 
I had my mind quite made up to coming to Japan 
one winter in Rome." 

We had a dear little dinner quite by ourselves, 
we three; la belle in a severe white gown, that 
made her more than ever a goddess of beauty. 
Such lines ! Such pure and perfect contours ! 
Such fine and delicate colour ! Certainly one 
of the most beautiful countenances I have ever 
looked upon — a sculptor's model, as she sat. I 
have not looked on her like since she vanished from 
me in Rome; and I have seen so little of beauty 
in these last months, that I could not keep my 
eyes from her face — nor any more my mind from 
Lyov. 

It was arranged for them to see the sights, and 
on the following day to visit the hospitals and 
Ide-bude-machi, where the young naval officers 
have a charming quartette. The Queen of Greece 
sent the piano, the violins came from the Grand 
Duchess Serge's funds, and those clever boys have 
had Japanese make other instruments for them. 
They play well, and we urge them to go on tour 
when they return to Europe. "The Prison 
Orchestra!" Consider the furor! Tickets, fifty 
roubles at least. 




o 



CHAPTER XVII 

"LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 

Saturday, November 5th. 
T HARDLY dared to go near Lyov, nor yet to 
-^ stay away. I felt guilty. I had excruci- 
ating dread lest he find me out, lest my face 
declare my embarrassment when I looked in on 
him, as I passed to Vladimir's ward. 

"Oh! Yes. Thank you; a thousand times. 
Better, I suppose. I really don't know though, 
that it makes me glad. What for.^ What for.^^ 
Except that I appreciate the past. A sound body 
and whole bones ! What blessings !" he sighed. 
"Do you know, Sophia Ivanovna, I had a curious 
dream last night? We were all in Rome again, 
dining with you. We drank Aste spumante with 
the fragrance of peaches ; I can faintly taste, re- 
member tasting it, yet. We were all there — the 
Canadian beauty — Contessa Foresta, too. 

"Well, something happened, a fire, an explosion, 
or Boni's excavations, or a campanile collapsed 
with us ; but anyhow, I lay among great stones 
that weighed on me. One where there is the break 
in my leg, and another on this slashed arm. I 
could not move. You and Vladimir were there; 

161 



162 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

but Vladimir was under great weights too, and 
you were trying to help him out. La helle came 
to me, and said : 'Come !' I struggled. I could 
not move. I told her to see how I was weighed 
down. 'Come !' she said, in that grand manner of 
hers; and suddenly, I felt myself rise and move! 
move out, move past all these wards, the operating 
room, and the chancery. We passed the guard- 
house, we went past the sentries, and out, out! 
Ach Gott! it was too real. I have lived it over, 
thought it over, remembered it all distinctly, a 
hundred times since I woke. I see her now, the 
very curve of that perfect chin, the gold Hghts in 
her hair. Ah me ! Sophia, I do not want to live. 
What can I live for, hope for now.? Where shall 
I go when this is all ended .^ In what corner of 
Europe drag out my maimed life.^^ I, a cripple!" 

•<::> ^v::> <:> <:::>- 

"Oh, Sophia ! Sophia ! See what you have 
done !" said Vladimir. "You have loosed the fates, 
and now you cannot control them. Here's the 
fourth act of your drama coming on top of the 
first scene of the first act. Your little comedy, if 
it is one, and not a tragedy, does not develop 
artistically. They would never stage it at the 
Gymnase, nor the Odeon. Your events are moving 
too fast. How are you going to hold your players 
back, to check them up?" 



"LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 163 

"But she's not coming here to-day. They have 
only telegraphed for permits to visit the prisoners' 
quarters, so they cannot come till to-morrow; 
and they went this morning to Tobe, to visit the 
potteries. They can't come before to-morrow." 

"Ah! That is better. You will have to think 
out a denouement — when one day has elapsed. It 
is your affair, not mine. I wash my hands, now, 
and go to my fauteuil de halcon to look on. But I 
shall criticise, remember— like a brute, like Sarcey 
and Scott rolled in one." 

"But, shall I tell Lyov first that she is here — in 
Japan — in Matsuyama — in my house — in this 
ward? or leave them to explain all themselves .?" 

"Oh, heavens ! Sophia, don't ask me. Lead up 
to it a Httle, I beg you. Tell him that la Veuve 
Anglaise of yesterday is the Contessa's aunt and 
sister of the British Minister, who has just this 
summer come out to Japan. A fine time to change 
ministers ! After the beginning of the war ! But 
then, Sir John's a soldier, and better than the pale 
civilian with a liver, who has gone to Carlsbad. 
Sir John is a dozen of his predecessor at any game 
— picquet, cricket, and diplomacy. Anyhow, lead 
Lyov up to the possibilities. Let him plan it in- 
side his own head, if you can. Tiens! but your 
drama grows interesting, now that you've called 
telepathy to your aid. Of course, the mystic air 
waves have carried signals of her presence, as 



164 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

our theosophical, hypnotical, mesmeric friends in 
Rome would say. This outdoes all the seances in 
the Barberini and at Monte Giordano. Lucky 
thing that Foresta broke his neck anyhow. It 
wouldn't do for the dramatic unities to have him 
around, alive, on the stage, now. He's better in 
background, in far perspective. It would take a 
whole act to put him out of the way." 

I let Lyov tell me his dream once again ; and 
then asked what he thought of la Veuve Anglaise. 
Ah! has! he hadn't thought. He had not looked. 
"But does she remind you of any one.^" I asked. 
"Is she like any one j'^ou knew in Rome?" 

"Oh, yes," she reminded him of her one hundred 
twin sisters, all replicas of the same conventional 
veuve Anglaise — grand deuil or demi-deuil, they 
were all veuves to him. 

"But," I said, "she is the sister of the new 
British Minister, you know, and he is the uncle of 
the Contessa Foresta. Now do you think any- 
thing at all?" 

Lyov stared at me for a full minute. "By all 
the saints! Sophia Ivanovna!" he said, slowly, 
with difficulty. "I don't know what she looked 
like ; whom she looked like. Not like mia Mira, as 
you know. For no one ever was as beautiful as 
she. But Sophia ! That dream ! It was a mes- 
sage from mia Mira last night. She must know 
that I am here. She will come and lead me out. I 



"LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 165 

believe it. Has la Veuve gone? Will she come 
here again? Oh, ask her, and tell me everything 
about la belle — and — Foresta, too. Yes, I want 
to knov/. Is she happy? Will Foresta live for- 
ever, do you think? There are great epidemics 
and new diseases nowadays, you know. And Italy 
may go to war, too, some day. Ah ! I shall mend." 

'vi^ -<:::> ^Oy ''s::^ 

My ladies came back charmed with their day's 
excursion, and loaded with vases and figurines of 
the soft ivory-white Tobe-yaki, that is so nearly 
the priceless old blanc de Chine that I have always 
loved the most. The Contessa knows Oriental and 
shares my passion for hlanc de Chine. And, by 
the way, if I hve to be a hundred years old, hlanc 
de Chine will never be the same again, and always 
must remind me of Matsuyama. For we eat and 
drink from Tobe-yaki plates and cups, and Tobe- 
yaki vases hold our flowers. 

"Do you see this?" said the Contessa. "Well, 
upon the advice of my superior guide, I have just 
paid an old sinner named Dorobu, in Kyoto, — 
never go to him by the v/ay, — sixty-six yens for 
just such another trumpery little, white vase with 
lions' heads near the collar. The very twin, the 
very twin of this one. So, I demanded of M. le 
Courier, when I saw all these at Tobe, how it is? 
and if he doesn't think that precious bit of old 



166 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

pai-tzu, or chien yao^ came from this same kiln at 
Tobe." 

"What did he say?'' 

"Oh! what they always say when cornered: 
'Very curious ! Very curious.' And by the way, 
we had an addition to our party to-day. At the 
second station, a Japanese officer came in, bowed 
to us, and after a time spoke. He said he was 
from the headquarters office, and would go with 
us to Tobe, if we wished. If we wished ! The idea ! 
Of course, he was detailed for that very duty — ^to 
trail us, to listen, and question, and pump us, and 
to put it all down in those notebooks of theirs. 
I suppose it is necessary in time of war; as Aunt 
Ellen and I might liberate all these prisoners. 
Japan, without the gendarmes, and the policemen, 
and their notebooks, would be so much more 
charming. Except for the passport nuisance, it 
might as well be Russia here. They are mad on 
the subject of spies. Say: 'Rotan! RotanF and 
they go off their heads at once. Even Uncle John 
advised me not to go near the prisoners here, and 
to always explain that I was English, even claim 
to be an American, rather than emphasise my 
Itahan name. It seems that the Great Republic 
is most in favour now, in spite of the English Alli- 
ance ; much to the disgust of mine uncle. It 
ruffles him. 

"Our little officer, however, was very agreeable. 



"LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 167 

He had a charming manner, and if he was a little 
slow with his English at first, he had a good day's 
practice lesson in colloquial. I was his pedante. 
I felt just like one of the pedantes walking their 
boy pupils around the Pincio. I made him talk to 
all the old peasants for me, and ask if they had 
sons at war, and we gave them money and — oh! 
one old woman, who was carrying a big bundle of 
staves along the road, said she had two kodomos at 
the war, and one of them had sent her a yen, and 
the government gave the son's wife two yens a 
month for the family of six ! Think of it ! She 
pays fifty sens a month for the rent of a house; 
house she called it, o'uchi. What could it be like 
for fifty sens? She earns twenty sens a day, 
carrying staves from the mountain down into the 
town, two round trips ; four miles in the morning, 
and four in the afternoon. And this was her last 
trip down, poor thing. We put the little old 
brownie into my huruma, bundle and all. You 
should have seen her face when the thing moved 
off ! I gave her money to buy katsuo-hushi, rice, 
and some good strong sake for her honourable 
old health, and Aunt Ellen sent money for winter 
flannels for the son's children — four of them. 
Wouldn't you know Madame la Tante was English 
by that.? Flannels! Oh! soup and flannels, to be 
sure, for the parish poor ! 

"Well, when we got to the station there was our 



168 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

old woman with all the family. The o^uchi was 
emptied out and drawn up on the platform in a 
bowing row; even the baby on her back bobbed 
its head, when mother and grandmother bobbed. 
All our beneficiaries of the day were bobbing there, 
too. And policeman and gendarmes ! — a few — 
many hundreds of them, with those notebooks, of 
course. Being such distinguished visitors, with 
military escort and the whole police department all 
out in our honour, we tried to meet the situation. 
We managed to make up an even fifty yens, and 
asked the chief of police to give it to the most 
needy of the soldiers' families, as our appreciation 
of a day in Tobe. 

" 'To how many families ?' asked the chief, 
while a sub took notes for him in a wretched little 
black book. 'We have twenty most needy families, 
eighty families in distress, and one hundred and 
eleven families insufficiently supplied in this dis- 
trict.' 

"We assigned it to the twenty most needy, and 
I shall send eighty yens over for the families in 
distress. Although you see no beggars and no 
misery flaunted here, there must be great suffering 
among the reservists' families. This government 
relief of two yens a month is not enough to feed 
whole families, old women, young children and all. 
Oh ! that this war were over ! And I suppose you 
wish it more fervently than I, Madame von Theill.^ 



^'LA BELLE CANADIENNE'* 169 

How happy if we were all in Rome again ! At 
your villa as before." 

"Yes. If we were only back in Rome again ! 
Vladimir in an invalid chair on the sunny terrace, 
as he likes to picture himself, watching the Forum 
through the telescope. If we only were ! To see 
Vladimir, and Boni, and Lyov SiemenofF putter- 
ing over a box of green, copper scraps would give 
me all the joy in the world." 

At the mention of Lyov's name, she lifted her 
eyes and looked clear through me and my bungling 
conspiracies. 

"Is M. Siemenoff here in Matsuyama.^" she put 
to me point-blank. 

"His — servant was brought to the hospital 
some weeks ago," I weakly stammered. 

"Where was his master then?" and the eyes, 
looking through my transparent answer, put me 
in the flutter that I had expected the mention of 
Lyov's name to produce in her. I blurted out all I 
knew, and submitted to her cross-questioning in 
penitence. A judge in court could not have been 
more calm and judicial than she. 

"I shall stay here with my maid, if you will let 
me share your menageV^ said the impassive one; 
and at least seven scenes of my melodrama were 
swept away. They do things differently in this 
generation, I see. At least, the joke is on Vladi- 
mir for once. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

LOVERS' MEETING 

Sunday, November 6th, 
T lEUTENANT ITO came to luncheon with us, 
■^"^ and incidentally we explained to him that 
the Contessa and I were old friends in Rome ; that 
I lived in Rome always in the winter and went to 
England in the summer; that I had not been in 
Russia for five years, when the war broke out. 

^'N aruhodo T' (wonderful) said the lieutenant 
at that; and ''Naruhodof' he said again when the 
Contessa told of Vladimir's occupations in archse- 
ology. "Ah ! he studies and learns something for 
the good of his country." 

We repeated the Von Theill autobiography to 
make it quite clear, and then told him as distinctly 
that la Contessa Foresta, although a widow of an 
Italian officer, had been made a British subject 
again by the courts at Ottawa. All this for the 
benefit of the headquarters, where, of course, it 
was put in writing post-haste. 

I looked in on Lyov, as I went by, and told him 
that la Veuve would come again, and that she 
could tell him about the widow of Count Foresta. 

170 



LOVERS' MEETING 171 

"Widow !" shouted Lyov, almost leaping from 
his bandages ; and such a light flashed over his 
face, such a look came in his eyes, as it is not fit 
for any, but the one woman in all the world, to 
meet in man's eyes. It was the real Lyov again, 
the handsome young giant of the frank face and 
laughing eyes, that we had lost in Rome. 

And Vladimir ! Oh ! man ! man ! what incon- 
sistencies are thine ! He knew the Contessa would 
act in just that way. He knew it would come out, 
just as he said it would. Anyhow, the affaire de 
cceur, that seemed out of my hands already, was 
doing him good — a tonic that braced him visibly 
and took his mind off his woes and Russia's woes. 

When the orderly told me the Barina were com- 
ing, I ran to Lyov to straighten his pillows and 
arrange my mise en scene. "The two English 
ladies are coming soon," I said. 

"Two! Ah-h!" sighed Lyov slowly, luxuri- 
ously, closing his eyes. "I knew it." 

Did he.? Indeed! Really, he and Vladimir are 
too much. 

While the officers greeted the great English 
Kangofuy 1 gave the Contessa the routine account 
of the nurse's duties, how the watches were kept, 
the milk chilled, the water heated — and she looked 
at me. Looked through me again for a change, 
and looked protest at the idle delay. 

The chief -surgeon lifted the curtain. "Captain 



172 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Siemenoff, one of General Mistchenko's officers, 
severely wounded at the Shaho," he said, and as 
the Contessa stepped in ahead of us, I started 
hastily for Vladimir's alcove as refuge, and almost 
ran into Grievsky. I presented him. He bent low- 
over Madame H 's hand, and Andrew Y 

shuffled his straw sandals together and paid his 
compliments. We all walked on together to 
Vladimir, whose face was blank inquiry, for no 
Contessa appeared with us. I went back to tell 
that the samovar waited, and Lyov, looking at me 
with defiant impatience, said: "She does not want 
tea." 

We laughed, the Contessa bent and said some- 
thing, and I pulled her away as the ferret-inter- 
preter and a nurse passed by. In some way, I 
knew the affair was settled, and out of my hand. 
There was a sense of ownership, an air of pro- 
prietorship in the magnificent way in which Lyov 
put me aside and outside of it all, and my share in 
the affair was plainly over. 

The samovar was hissing, the sun shone, the air 
of the little cubicle was full of chrysanthemum 
spice, and all was good cheer. Every man 
paid adoring court to the beautiful woman — the 
first they had seen for ages. And how old and 
yellow, faded and wrinkled, we others looked be- 
side that piece of human perfection ! 

She carried a cup of tea to Lyov, waving aside 



LOVERS^ MEETING 173 

all offers of assistance, and dumfounding mc 
by the quiet matter of fact : "Two lumps, please, 
and a bit of lemon, he likes." 

She came back for bread and butter; she came 
again for a second cup of tea. "The nurse says 
he is much better this afternoon," said the Goddess 
condescendingly, as if I were a stranger in the 
ward; and I retorted with the malice of the old 
cat I can be : "Oh, the nurse ! I am glad you have 
a duenna in there." And was immediately sorry 
for what I had said. 

When our little tea-party broke up, the Con- 
tessa was first to reach Lyov's curtain, and said: 
"Good-bye, Captain Siemenoff. I hope we have 
not excited or made you worse." 

"Oh ! quite to the contrary ; you have made me 
well. Enter, I beg of you." 

We all went in to see the artful beggar. The 
surgeon looked surprised at the change in his 
patient — at the smiling, radiant countenance, the 
strong cheerful voice. 

"Why, the Captain san is four weeks better 
than he was this morning !" 

"I shall get up to-morrow morning; and if the 
honourable chief-surgeon permits the Contessa 
Foresta to give me the same tea to-morrow, I shall 
walk the next day; and carry my trunk to the 
Kokaido the third day." 

"Ah ! and me ! Poor me ! Me also !" cried Griev- 



174 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

sky. "Will not the gracious Contessa give me 
tea, too — now — to-morrow — oh! at any time? 
Oh ! honourable doctor, please prescribe that same 
tisane for me. Tea a VAnglaise. Everything 
a VAnglaise for me. I also desire to go and live at 
the Kokaido, and wear real clothes again." 

"Ah! Me! Me!" cried Akimoff, waving his 
crutch above the floor. ^^EikoJcu, Ingirisu o'cha 
(English, English tea). I will drink it too. 
Litres of it ! Litres of it ! Jf the Contessa Foresta 
herself prescribes it and gives it." The Japanese 
officers laughed gleefully at the mock comedy, and 
the nesans giggled sympathetically. 

"I shall return," said the Contessa, speaking 
directly to Lyov. And the others, all uncompre- 
hending, capped it by wailing humourously: "Re- 
turn — in the springtime? Oh no, Madame la Con- 
tessa, to-morrow, to-morrow. We beg you." 

"Yes. Surely. Will the honourable doctor 
prescribe my tisane for all the patients, if they are 
really better in the morning?" 

''Saio de gozarimasu/' said the little doctor, 
helpless with laughter and under the spell of her 
beauty as much as we westerners. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 

Monday, November 7th. 

LA CONTESSA and her aunt and I, and the 
faithful Lieutenant Ito, of course, went to 
Dogo and saw the sights— the hot springs, where 
Jingo Kogo stopped to bathe on her way to the 
conquest of Korea; and the rooms in the bathing 
pavihon occupied by the present Crown Prince of 
Japan, when he came to lyo province a few seasons 
since. The bathing pool is the heart of the village, 
the market place and social exchange, as much as 
the Forum of Augustus at Rome. It is never 
closed, and hums night and day with the com- 
panies of men, and of women and children, who 
boil in separate pools. There are pools of differ- 
ent degrees in their heat and sulphur strength, but 
only a Japanese could endure the hottest of all. 
There are parties of Russian officers at Dogo every 
day. The country people and the villagers re- 
ceive them kindly and pleasantly, and no one 
looking on would think the horio sans (honour- 
able prisoners) any different from other foreign 
tourists, who now and then visit this faraway 

175 



176 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

province. The village children are always on the 
alert for the coming of the Rokokos (Russians), 
bob their little courtesies, and, just as surely, re- 
ceive some present. 

If we had been by ourselves, three ladies, they 
might have let us look in upon the tank, where the 
women and children chatter by the half-hour, up 
to their necks in hot water, but regulations do not 
permit mixed bathing, nor for a man to look in. 
Our little officer, too, was enough of Modern 
Japan to be consumed with a mauvaise honte over 
the naturalness and simplicity of the national 
bathing customs, and so distressed lest we should 
remark too much upon it, that we could only stop 
a moment to comment on the chirp and chatter 
from the community bath-tubs, and to note the 
thumps on the big barrel drum that warns them of 
the passing quarter-hours. 

Tea houses surround this central bath-house, 
and they all possess stores of beautiful screens 
and pictures that are brought out to beautify the 
rooms of the convalescent Japanese officers, sent 
to these springs to recuperate — heroes to the 
worshipping Dogo people, who overwhelm them 
with gifts and attentions. In lesser degree, the 
convalescents of the rank and file receive the grati- 
tude of their fellow subjects. They are quartered 
in the garden pavilions and tea houses of the public 
park, on the site of the old castle of the Hisamatsu 



THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 177 

family. The moats are dry, but their embank- 
ments and stone walls remain, and the glacis of 
the old fortress is a sloping lawn planted with 
young cherry and plum trees. 

I must admit that a Japanese hospital is the 
cleanest, most spotless and immaculate place in all 
the world. For one thing, the soft matted floors 
are as clean as the white beds laid on the floor, and 
the Red Cross kimonos of white calico carry out 
the symphony in white. And the Japanese faces, 
yellow as they are, are always so shiningly clean. 
I wish our poor dirty Cossacks could be like them 
in this regard, but their heavy boots, coarse skins, 
and wild mops of hair on head and face, make them 
unattractive at best. And the white kimono, with 
their heavy leather boots, finishes any chance of 
their being objects of Russian pride. We are not 
a pretty people in masses ; not an artistic race, 
not an assthetic nation. One pities, only pities the 
poor Cossacks that they do not possess that in- 
definable quality, charm; pities them that they 
cannot be cleaner and more civilised-looking; 
pities their ignorance, and that they are not even 
able to know how low in the scale of civilisation 
they are. Ach Gott! what years, what genera- 
tions lie before poor, distracted, incompetent, 
ignorant, and uneducated, half-awakened Russia 
before its peasants and work people can be as clean 
and well educated as these average Japanese. 



178 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Talk about the awakening of China ! Let us 
wake up Russia first. 

The Japanese invahds sat up on their futons 
and made nice bows when we were introduced, and 
I felt myself a museum specimen, when they ex- 
plained me to the convalescent company. The 
surgeon told them that my master lay at the 
barracks hospital, wounded forty- two times ; that 
I had come all the way from Russia to nurse him ; 
and that as a thank-offering I had given a 
thousand yens to the Red Cross and to the Volun- 
teer Nurses' Societies. Then, down on the mats 
went every black head, after a chorus of wonder- 
ing "aSo desha's'"" (is that so.?) and "Naru- 
hodo's!" (wonderful), had interrupted the sur- 
geon. Beginning with the first invalid on my right, 
each made some little expression in Japanese, that 
they were sorry the Japanese soldiers had hurt my 
husband and made me so much trouble; but that 
these accidents must happen in war; and that it 
was hard luck that the bravest men were always 
wounded first and most severely. They thanked 
me for my gifts to the Red Cross, and they 
thanked me, quite as much as they thanked the 
great English Kangofu, for coming to see them. 

One man without arms had not been able to 
raise himself at all; so, while the others were dis- 
tributing their picture books and gifts, I talked to 
him in Japanese, and told him more of his visitors. 



THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 179 

"Is that one a Kangofu too?" he asked, looking 
toward the Contessa. "I wish she would stay here 
at Dogo. She looks like the Kwannon at my home 
temple. It is like hearing Kwannon talk. Maybe 
Kwannon can talk English, too." 

We watched the young recruits doing calis- 
thenics and vaulting on the castle drill ground 
near headquarters ; and, saddest sight of all, saw 
the relatives of the soldiers waiting in the open 
pavilion of a visitors' shed. The reservists 
called in some weeks ago go to Manchuria this 
week; and for days the town has been full of 
country people, who have come in to see them off — 
pathetic old fathers and mothers, women with 
flocks of children, and always the baby on the 
back, sometimes borrowed, I am sure, to account 
for the universality of the fashion. 

"Ohasama! Okasama! Anata Tohe sakujitsu?'* 
(Madam, madam! You were at Tobe day before 
yesterda}^?) said one to the Contessa, and immedi- 
ately the visitors' shed was in agitation. The 
whole countryside had evidently heard of the visit 
of the benevolent Kangofu, and they surrounded 
us, bowing and making nice polite speeches of 
praise for the kindness of the foreign ladies. 
"And are you English Kangofu also ?" they asked 
me, noticing my Red Cross badge. I hesitated for 
a moment, before I electrified them with the an- 
nouncement that I was a Russian Kangofu. Some 



180 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

started back in surprise and repulsion, and others 
came nearer to look their fill at such a living curio. 
"Let me see ! Let me have a look !" wailed a tooth- 
less old man, whose sight wa« dim, whose face was 
one mass of fine wrinkles. "I have never seen a 
Russian until to-day, and that was only a sailor. 
I want to see a Russian woman." After a long, 
slow scrutiny, "Old Age" turned away from me 
wearily. "Why, she is just like other foreign 
women, like the missionaries who come to our vil- 
lage every week. Not different. I thought the 
Russians were all very big and fierce, fierce as 
tigers, and had red hair. This one has the same 
high beak and the sharp eyes of a bird, like all the 
other foreign women. That is all." I sank far, 
far down, in even my own estimation, when the 
company of deep-voiced old women politely agreed 
with him in a chorus of *'Saio de gozarimasu!** 

We managed it very well at the barracks that 

afternoon. Madame H stayed at home to 

rest and receive some ladies of the Red Cross 
Society. The guide secured some charming dwarf 
trees, and those venerable pines, and cedars, and 
maples, as seen through the reverse of an opera 
glass, distracted even me from noticing how often 
and for how long the Contessa was with Lyov. 
That was a triumph of Japan's floral art surely ! 

Ah ! Japan ! Japan ! Why do you go to war, 
and slash, and shoot, and slaughter, and wallow in 



THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 181 

blood, when you can grow these adorable trees and 
do other things so much better ? 

Leave battle and murder to our Cossacks and to 
the Turcomans, who can do nothing else. It dis- 
concerts me to find these Japanese supreme in the 
barbaric, murderous arts of war that require no 
civihsation. It shocks me to think of an artistic, 
flower-loving people going to war 1 To bloody, 
untidy, expensive war I It is incongruous. 

-<::> <:> o o 

The Contessa and Lieutenant Ito stayed as long 
as I did that afternoon, for we had music after 
the tea, and all who could walk, or limp, or be 
helped in, came to hsten. Poor Lyov had to he 
far away, to hear only and not see. For his bene- 
fit we went to his alcove, with Akimoif's viohn, 
and sang the Ave Maria over again. 

Later, the Contessa and I walked far up the 
moat side to a curio shop, where I knew a tea bowl 
was waiting. We came home through the street 
of shops and we talked of — Japanese pottery ! of 
Bizen and Seto! of Awata and Satsuma! of 
Karatsu and the restl Was ever anything so 
banal ! 

There was a local fete going on at a temple, 
and a woman stood in the gateway holding a strip 
of cotton cloth with needles and black thread for 



182 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

the "Sen nln Riki'' (one thousand people's 
strength). The Contessa stopped and made a 
cross stitch and bit the thread, and then I stitched 
a knot on the bit of white cloth which the soldier- 
husband will wear to war — a girdle which will 
endue him with the strength of a thousand people, 
and by their thousand prayers carry him safely 
through all dangers. With every draft of troops 
that go to the war, many are provided with these 
magic belts. 

<:::>' <::> •<^ <::::^ 

And now that my guests are gone, and life is 
running along in its same routine, I have a strange 
sensation of something come and gone ; something 
missed from my life. I feel as if I had been in 
Rome, or as if suddenly snatched away from it. 
I indulge in day-dreams, too. Lyov must have the 
permission of his commanding officer to marry — 
of the Japanese surgeon-in-chief, or Marshal 
Oyama, he insists with a grimace. I suggest the 
French Ambassador, or a cable to Zakharoff in 
Petersburg. And then what about the religious 
service.'' How will they manage that.^^ Lyov 
being orthodox and la Contessa officially Romanist 
since her Italian marriage, there are difficulties 
without end. It is not possible to arrange a mar- 
riage until the war has ended, and I do not think 
'^hat Sir John will permit his beautiful niece to 



THE FOREIGNER KWANNON ISS 

introduce herself to the affairs of the imprisoned 
enemies of his ally during this war. 

Poor Lyov ! What an eligible parti you were in 
Rome ! And now what a detrimental ! what a sad 
mesalliance for a young and beautiful woman to 
marry you ! to marry a Russian ! I dare say, Lord 
Salisbury, if he were alive, would lump us in as one 
of "the dying nations" now. 



CHAPTER XX 

IN KIKU TIME 

Monday, November 28th. 
T HAD word from the Contessa that she had re- 
-*' turned to Tokyo and had remained there, 

while Madame H had gone north to visit more 

hospitals. She had informed her uncle of meeting 
old friends, and has made him wish to do a tour 
of the Inland Sea also. Then the artful minx 
writes fully how she has met at Legation dinners 
the Minister of War, the Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, the famous chief of the general staff, 
etc., and how she has told them of the admirable 
arrangements she saw at Hiroshima and Matsu- 
yama. "I quite delivered myself of a monologue 
on Matsuyama to the War Minister," she wrote, 
"and he agreed with me in my praises of the chief- 
surgeon, and could believe that his Russian 
patients grew fond of him. He was pleased, too, 
that the commandant has shown you such great 
kindness and consideration in your trying position, 
and he praises him to the skies." 

I chuckled to myself, for the local military, of 
course, read this long before I did. When I took 
it to show to Vladimir, he shouted in his old 

184 



IN KIKU TIME 185 

joyous way: "Oh! this is rippin', as my EngHsh 
kinsfolk say. Trust the Contessa to manage the 
whole affair now, Sophia. You may sit back and 
fold your hands; in other words, devote yourself 
to the affairs of your own heart — to your husband 
in the hand, while the Contessa cages hers, who is 
still in the bush ! What a loss to diplomacy that 
woman is !" 

I had signs enough that the Contessa's messages 
from Tokyo were read and approved by our 
guardians, and were doing good work for us all. 
The surgeons smiled in greeting, even the Prus- 
sianised commandant reined up beside my humble 
jinrikisha in the street, to pass the compliments of 
the day, and ask if my "Herr Colonel" was im- 
proving ! Everything has seemed to go on so well 
and so smoothly. Vladimir has improved, and his 
spirits are so gay and the weather so glorious, so 
like our warm Roman autumn, that once or twice 
I have really asked myself if I had anything in 
the world to complain of. 

Under my skilful massage, Lyov's shattered 
arms and knee have begun to feel a little life again. 
He begins to move, to bend and use them. Picture 
post cards come to him in showers. There is her 
big English handwriting on one side, and only her 
initials on the other; but that seems enough. 
Then she has written me : "I have definitely broken 
with Rome and begun Greek. Baptism soon." 



186 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Of course we understand, but however will they 
manage an orthodox marriage even then ! And 
will Ah Shing or Ah Tom provide the trousseau for 
a woman whom Doucet has delighted to dress for 
these years? And Lyov, whose whole wardrobe is 
a Red Gross kimono — ^what will he do? 

The spice of chrysanthemums is always in the 
air, and every day I take an armful to the bar- 
racks with me. I make Japanese floral arrange- 
ments, with Vladimir, Grievsky, and all the critics 
suggesting; and the little Red Cross sisters, the 
attendants, even the coolies, are eager to pose the 
stately flowers in ideal, naturalistic arrangements. 
The dullest-looking Cossack wakes a little to the 
beauty of flowers, and Lyov and Akimoff , who have 
most soul, are becoming apt pupils of the old 
teacher of flower arrangement who instructs us 
twice a week. 

"Ach Gottf' said Grievsky, striking his fore- 
head with despair. "To think of these monkeys 
knowing, inventing, evolving this finest of all fine 
arts, and poor old Europe never dreaming of any 
such things ! Why, Paris knows no more about 
bouquet-making now than it did in Caesar's day ; 
and yet these people have three wholly distinct 
and rival schools, each with thirty conventional, 
well-ordered, well-known ways of arranging each 
flower ! Ah ! What can we teach the Japanese ? 
It is plain that I, that we, cannot teach them the 



IN KIKU TIME 187 

art of war. And then they know all these other 
things beside! These arts are so fine, so refined, 
that the best of us — only us few— can barely com- 
prehend ! And think of our coolies, our peasants, 
the Russian mujiks spending an hour to pose 
three little yellow chrysanthemums in a fragile 
bamboo cup hanging on the wall! Ach! Ach! Let 
us not think of it. There are no masters of flower 
arrangement in our villages, nor yet in the pro- 
vincial capitals. My head goes all sakesama [up- 
side down] when I try to think out some of these 
things ; racial traits, racial conundrums they are. 
They are too much for me. Oh ! Damn Japan ! 
I cannot understand it at all. Damn that Ameri- 
can Commodore Perry who opened it all out." 

And then Lyov : "Osip, I shall beat you, if you 
do not step more carefully. Every time you come 
in, you jar my flowers; and if you make them fall 
down with your galloping hoofs, I shall ask the 
Japanese to torture you." And Osip grins and 
lurches off on tiptoe, not sure whether his master 
is in earnest or in delirium. 

The surgeons told us of an autumn salad of 
yellow chrysanthemum petals, which will secure 
long life, as the Mku is a longevity symbol. 

Andrew Y , grand gourmet that he is, pricked 

up his ears at this and went headlong to the exe- 
cution of such a novelty. He served a kiku salad 
the next day, a loose heap of golden petals, shining 



188 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

with oil, salted, and just touched with a vinegar 
flavour, which went well with its natural spiciness. 
A portion was waiting when I arrived. "I present 
you with ten years more of life," said Andrew, 
bowing as he offered it, "for the Japanese say that 
any such wholly new sensation adds ten years to 
one's life." 

"Ten years of Matsuyama?" I asked, and he 
made frantic byplay to toss the plate through the 
window. 

I often find myself wondering how this life will 
seem to me in perspective, when I have lived some 
years longer and can then look back upon it. It 
will not be all sad retrospect, I am sure. My 
dearest ones, Vladimir, and Lyov, whom I consider 
one of my own kin, are safe with me here; I can 
look after them, see them, and do for them. I am 
sure that to-day I have much to be thankful for. 
It is dull, and sometimes irksome, this life at 
Matsuyama, but how easily it could be worse. 
How would it be with little Madame Takasu 
faring forth across all Siberia to find her wounded 
husband in a Russian hospital.'' Would that be 
possible for her ? I think not ; and I should protest 
with horror at the idea of her, alone or with a 
maid, going straight into the heart of the enemy's 
country, as I have done. Could she live as safely 
and comfortably in any little Russian or Siberian 
town, as I live here.^ Would she find these per- 



IN KIKU TIME 189 

fectly clean, hard, white streets and country- 
roads? these flower-peddlers and poetry-makers 
watching the moon rise over Siberian hills? Could 
she go safely about the streets alone all day and 
after sunset, as I go, and never meet anything but 
courtesy, kindness, and politeness from men, 
women, and children ? 



CHAPTER XXI 

A HAPPY NEW YEAR— FOR JAPAN 

Sunday, December 25th. 
/^UR Russian Christmas and the English 
^^ Twelfth Night were to fall in the same week 
with the prolonged Japanese New Year festivities. 
My little household indulged in all the delightful 
Japanese symbolic decorations ; and my doorway 
had its conventional pine, bamboo, and plum 
branches, bound with the twisted shimenawa, or 
sacred straw rope, to secure good luck and long 
life, and to avert evil. The servants had red rice 
and ceremonial dumplings, and each an extra 
month's wages and a new kimono, and it was a 
distinct pleasure to give to these who received it 
with such graceful courtesy. 

My whole house was fragrant with the exquisite 
perfume of dwarf plum trees — veteran trees with 
mossy, lichen-covered trunks, and growing only a 
half -metre high. The cream-white flowers exhaled 
a fragrance that strangely touched and thrilled 
me. Was it memory, or was it the strange, in- 
describable charm of this most beloved of all Japa- 
nese tree blossoms .^^ Sometimes, as the odour 

190 



A HAPPY NEW YEAR— FOR JAPAN 191 

came to me, I seemed struggling from a dream. 
It was the Japan of long ago. It was Tokyo 
again, and I was in my drawing-room in the little 
No. 2 house, and saw the row of tiny plum trees, 
white ones and rose-pink ones, with down-fall- 
ing blossoms, against the background of gold 
screens. The plum trees and the gold screens I 
have again, but in another, a changed Japan. 

'Qy <:> -<::> -^o 

We have really had a little of holiday spirit at 

the barracks, where Andrew Y , as head cook, 

has planned a Christmas feast. It is part of the 
humour of this situation that Andrew Y — — , 
once of the corps of pages with Vladimir, hussar 
officer in Alexander Nicholaivitch's time, should 
have charge of the hospital kitchens! That 
-flaneur of the boulevards, that pink and pet of the 
Guards, now studies over menus and supplies, 
bringing the daily ration of officers and soldiers 
to the military requirements of so many ounces of 
this and that, and to the medical requirements of 
so much carbon, nitrogen, and proteids — so much 
starch and sugar, so much solid and so much liquid 
food. He puts his whole mind on it and works 
hard, and this stimulus of an interest has done 
him good. He walks now with difficulty, but he 
can get about, and he is full of projects for keep- 
ing the barracks warmer; for, although in sunny 



192 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

December we have blooming hedges and rose- 
bushes, and golden-fruited persimmon trees have 
but given way to golden-fruited orange trees, 
those thin wooden barracks are draughty and bit- 
terly cold. It is rather a joke on us Russians to 
suffer with cold among the orange groves of 
Shikoku. 

"Qy <::iy -<:::> <:^ 

Tuesday, January 3rd. 
All day Sunday, the Japanese new-style, official 
New Year's day, Matsuyama was in gala array, 
and I drove around the circle of the city in the 
morning to see the street decorations. The main 
street was a bower of bamboos and pines. All 
signs of trade were put away for the day, the 
httle floor counters and show cases moved back; 
red blankets or precious old Sakai rugs spread on 
the floor, and the best screens opened out against 
the walls. Oh ! that those gold-leaf screens had 
been for sale ! But nothing was for sale that day. 
All stocks and commodities were pushed out of 
sight, and silk-clad companies sat in these golden 
bays, playing sober games of "go," or enjoying 
tea and ceremonial cakes. An exquisite flower 
arrangement was always set on a low stand before 
the screens, with a bowl or plaque for visitors' 
cards and souvenirs. Always there was a dwarf 



A HAPPY NEW YEAR— FOR JAPAN 193 

plum tree, with its fragrant cream-white or rose- 
coloured blossoms. Few people moved in the 
streets, save the rustling, silk-clad visitors, and 
girls and children, gay in scarlet and brilliantly- 
painted crapes, playing their New Year's game of 
battledore and shuttlecock. 

"Port Arthur is still ours, ours ! 1905 has 
come, and Kwangtung is still Russian territory!" 
said Grievsky. "It still affords a safe shelter to 
our brave fleet. You see ! I told you so. A New 
Year has begun, and our flag is there, as it was 
last year, will be next year, and for all the years 
forever to come. Ah ! I drink to our brave army ! 
May the fleet, that fleet ! la flotte peureuse! — come 
here — to Matsuyama ! and rest in peace and quiet ! 
Dame! but it would give me no heartbreaks to 
have Togo bag the whole lot, boats and boots, and 
bring them here — here, where there are men — men 
who want only the chance to fight for Russia. 
And they lie at anchor, under the guns of the 
forts ! Ah ! if I had one battery there ! For just 
one hour ! They would make a sortie then. They 
would move from their anchorage when I placed 
the sights. They could choose between my guns 
and Togo's guns. What is our navy for? What 
has Russia to show for the roubles she has spent 
for sea power.? A flock of boats cowering in a 
land-locked harbour; a club full of champagne 
officers enjoying themselves on shore! Ah! let me 



194 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

ever meet one of them in Petersburg ! I will pull 
his nose. I will challenge." 

On Monday, I went early to the barracks to 
help in the operating room as relief nurse, and, 
on my way home for my tiffin, a fusillade came 
from the skies, the pom! pom! pop! of day fire- 
works overhead. More celebration of the New 
Year, I thought. The coolie stopped, turned a 
dazed face around to me, and said, grinning : "Ah ! 
Riojinko! Riojinko!^^ It was as if a shot had 
struck me. I felt collapsing with terror and 
fright. Instantly, people ran from their houses, 
and ran from the side streets to the broad road, 
recognising the prearranged signal that an- 
nounced the fall of Port Arthur. They cried: 
^'Banzai!''' and ran to see the bulletin boards at the 
newspaper offices in the main street. 

I met Madame Takasu, and she stopped her 
huruma and stepped down to speak to me. Dear 
little woman ! Even in that hour of her great re- 
joicing, she could feel for me. She put both her 
hands on mine, as she leaned over, the long cere- 
monial sleeves of her heliotrope crape coat sweeping 
my wheels recklessly : "It is your sorrow, I fear. 
Yes, it is true. Riojinko has fallen down to Gen- 
eral Nogi. It was wise, we think, in General Stoes- 
sel to save lives and surrender. It could only have 
been for a few more days^ at any rate — and many, 
many more deaths. It is very hard for you, and 



A HAPPY NEW YEAR— FOR JAPAN 195 

for the Colonel san, I know. But, perhaps, it 
brings nearer that peace, and that home of yours. 
It is ordered that nothing be said at the hospital 
to-day. There will not be a Banzai to-night. It 
is not officially announced from Tokyo yet. I am 
so sorry to hurt you by being so happy ; but now, 
no more of our lyo soldiers shall die over there 
with General Nogi's sons. Port Arthur is restored 
to us." 



CHAPTER XXII 

ALL IS LOST— EVEN HONOUR 

Thursday, January 5th. 
"^TEVER had I entered the dreary hospital 
-*- ^ gates with such a heavy heart. I stopped 
to talk about nothing to Madamp Takasu, who 
looked sympathy from her eyes, to ask Nesan 
about Lyov's gruel, and to ask the American sister 
about her home for factory girls, which she has 
just opened. All the delay did not pick up my 
spirits, as I dragged my way towards Vladimir, 
dreading the gloom that I should find there. How 
hard my life seemed ! Vladimir and I tied to this 
rigid routine of life here in these unlovely sur- 
roundings, and our villa at Rome closed, echoing, 
empty ! Sunshine and flowers on the terraces, and 
all our world driving past. All our world looking 
up at our walls and perhaps passing a question or 
remark about us ; wondering where we are this 
winter ; laughing at Russia's reverses. 

Shall we ever really live again with our chosen 
friends around us, and come and go, hear music, 
read new books, and enjoy life's luxuries.? 

196 



ALL IS LOST— EVEN HONOUR 197 

Think of all that full, rich life in Kome ! What 
a keen and lively pleasure it would be to dine again 
at that palace in Funari, or at Pamfili Doria, to 
sit under the Romano ceiling, and watch the Cel- 
lini gilt flagons and epergnes on the table! I am 
homesick in these holidays. Oh! so homesick for 
my home, my Rome. 

They were not concerned about the fusillade of 
day fireworks in Vladimir's ward. They were not 
downcast, but in full, defiant, fighting mood. 

*'Pouf ! Bah! Madame, you hear the bombs? 
Well, do not be disturbed," said Akimoff . "Believe 
it when you see the prisoners, when Kondrachenko 
comes and tells us himself. When Port Arthur 
does fall, there will be no surrenders, there will 
be no prisoners to come here. They will all be 
dead — dead every man of them. Not one living 
Russian will be left there to tell. The Czar has 
charged them. It is honour. As well surrender the 
Imperial regalia or the Iberian Virgin of Moscow. 
We have heard these day fireworks before. Come, 
let us practise our Mass again." 

They convinced me, weathercock that I am, 
just as Madame Takasu and the rejoicing crowds 
in the streets had convinced me. I saw that it was 
all the exuberance of the Japanese New Year's 
spirit ; that these men, in their heavy silk hakama 
and haori, rustling around to pay their New Year's 
visits, had had too much sake, and could believe 



198 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

any tiling ; that the little butterflies of children, in 
their gay crape gowns, and the young girls in 
exquisite crape kimonos, playing a gentle battle- 
dore and shuttlecock bareheaded in the streets, 
said ''Banzai!'' as regularly as ''OmedetoP^ It was 
all a greeting of the season, and we had a cheery 
afternoon with our music. 

There were more day fireworks the next morn- 
ing, and the gardener brought me a little pink 
gogai that announced the birth of a third son 
to the Crown Prince of Japan. Three sons to 
insure this succession! What luck! Their own 
Gods surely love the Japanese. Three infant 
princes already, and not a useless girl-baby 3^et ! 
And look at Russia with a nursery full of little 
girls, and the Czarevitch but a feeble infant! 
"Three good lucks !" said Kinsan, the little amah. 
"One piece good luck — New Years ; Two piece 
good luck — Port Arthur ; Three piece good luck — 
the baby ! Oh Banzai!'' she chirruped with a ris- 
ing inflection, happy from her holiday hairdress to 
her new kiri clogs. 

When the crossed flags were hung out at head- 
quarters gates and at all the temples ; when the 
red-rayed service flag flew triumphant from the 
tallest tower of the chateau, and a great bulletin 
was put out at headquarters, it was final. Port 
Arthur had surrendered! The treaty was signed 
at eight o'clock that night, just as the little prince 



ALL IS LOST— EVEN HONOUR 199 

was born. Will they call him Arthur, I wonder? 
They should. 

The coterie in the hospital contradict all the 
news I bring, and doggedly maintain that it is 
impossible to reduce that fortress, all the forty 
fortresses that constitute Port Arthur. Yet it 
has surrendered ; not to an army furiously storm- 
ing and breaking through the defences, seizing 
the commands at their posts and the generals in 
the council chamber. It was not at any such last, 
desperate moment, that Stoessel betrayed his Czar 
and all Russia, and yielded up the fortress. The 
Japanese did not come to Stoessel. No. Stoessel 
sent the offer, and Stoessel and his staff rode to 
the Japanese headquarters the next day, and 
signed the humiliating capitulation. Who rode 
with that traitor that he did not shoot him in the 
back.'' And Stoessel gave his horse to General 
Nogi ! Theatricals — heroics. It was not his horse 
to give. He had surrendered the fortress and all 
it contained. Why not have magnanimously made 
Nogi the personal present of a cannon, or a battle- 
ship? Bah! 

With Port Arthur lost, why should the war go 
on? Let us go back to Europe. Let the Japa- 
nese have Manchuria. It may prove their undoing 
as it has been ours. 

In every mind there is but one question. Why? 
Why? Whi^ did they surrender, when there were 



200 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

food and clothing, guns and ammunition for a 
year, and more than fifty thousand men? 

The lunatics are entirely insane, madmen now. 
This terrible news has been the last shock for tot- 
tering reason, and the surgeons have put them off 
by themselves, under guard. It was an unspeak- 
able relief when they were gone from the ward, 
and Vladimir really gained. It must be a sorry 
night's rest indeed, when one is separated from a 
pair of lunatics by only a light curtain. The 
Japanese, who do not sleep or live with locked 
doors, cannot know how we Europeans feel. I 
never used to sleep soundly in the flimsy Japanese 
houses those summers at Hakone. I never got 
used to being at the mercy of the sliding panel. 
This life without privacy is different from real 
living. We Europeans must have locks and bolts, 
real doors on hinges. Screens and sliding par- 
titions and paper walls give one too temporary, 
too insecure a feeling. They say it is because of 
our want of self-control, that we foreigners want 
to hide and lock. No wonder the Japanese have 
had to cultivate stoicism, self-control, and the 
immovable, unalterable countenance, to put the 
locks and bolts upon their faces and their own 
inner selves. 

The last word is, that the Kaiser has decorated 
the two generals ! Stoessel and Nogi. "The two 
heroes of Port Arthur !" Nogi, yes, perhaps ; but 



ALL IS LOST— EVEN HONOUR SOI 

StoesseL? No! No! Were he a hero, he would 
have died in the fort's defence. What a thing for 
that madman of Europe to do ! As indecent as all 
his other exploits — rushing in where decency would 
hold back. Could he not wait, in common courtesy, 
for Stoessel's own sovereign to bestow the first 
reward — if Stoessel should even merit it? 



CHAPTER XXIII 
"GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE!" 

Thursday, January 12th. 

STOESSEL and his inglorious company have 
reached Nagasaki, to take the Messagerie 
steamer for Marseilles, and my obstinate Russians 
now abandon their pose and accept the sad truth. 
Port Arthur has fallen. The Russian flag has 
been drawn down from the strongest fortress in 
the world — the Cronstadt, the Ehrenbreitstein, the 
Gibraltar of the East. Esper is full of scorn at 
the details of Stoessel's theatricals when he reached 
Nagasaki and took farewell of his confreres for — 
three days ! He addressed them, after the manner 
of Napoleon at Fontainebleau ; embraced them, 
kissed them, and they all wept maudlin, senile 
tears together — to the amazement of the Japa- 
nese, who do not at all understand any such 
demonstrations and parades of emotion. Then 
Stoessel went down the gangway to his launch, 
and the gray-beards wept ; and he went over to 
Inasa and occupied a house and garden, and they 
all came following after and occupied other houses 
and gardens. The Nagasaki municipality voted 

202 



• "GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE !" 203 

a sum of money for entertaining these foreign 
guests, and — how the God of War must laugh! 
The generals and the admiral will make their 
retreat at the old chateau of Nag03^a until the 
end of the war. The lesser horios will be scat- 
tered the length of Japan, in all the old castle 
towns, where there are garrisons to guard them. 
We seem a small company here — 50 officers 
and 1300 of the rank and file— in view of 
the army that is coming. And the Viceroy said, 
before the war began, that his first move would be 
to land an army in Japan. The army is landing, 
but the Viceroy of the two-metre belt is not land- 
ing with it. 

Up to this time, there have been only three thou- 
sand prisoners in all Japan. Now, from Port 
Arthur comes the incredible number of 42,421 
prisoners ! At least, that is the number of Rus- 
sians the Japanese say surrendered and were 
counted. It is staggering to think of. One only 
recalls Bazaine's army at Metz. A surrender that 
fitly matches this one. The numbers ring in my 
ears continually and dance in figures before my 
eyes. Grievsky snorts with wrath, calls the Japa- 
nese figures exaggeration and boasting, something 
to please the national megalomania ; but he and 
Esper, for all that, run their finger down the 
printed lists in the Kobe paper and wrathfully 
comment and argue. Stoessel sent word out again 



204 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

and again, at the last, that they were "but a 
handful" ; and the Japanese believed there were 
but 6,000 effective soldiers for all the forts, since 
escaping torpedo boats had also given that word 
at Chefoo. All the world, as well as the Czar, had 
talked about a mere 'handful.' The Japanese 
were lost in admiration that these few thousand 
men could continue to withstand fatigue, exhaus- 
tion, and sleeplessness. The Japanese knew that 
there must be stores of provisions and ammunition 
remaining, because such things were rushed in by 
trainloads for months and months ; but they knew 
also that the most frantic efforts were made at 
Shanghai in August, to get in medical supplies — 
anaesthetics, antiseptics, and bandages, which alone 
had been forgotten in the preparations for a long 
siege. There were champagne and vodka to last 
three years. Chloroform and bandages .^^ Niet! 
Niet! 

"Oh ! this cursed prearrangement !" growled 
Grievsky, as he thrashed the side of his chair with 
the Kobe newspaper. "But see how they repelled 
the officiousness of their ally. Read that ! I am 
glad the English got the rebuff. Bravo ! for the 
Japanese ! Yes, I — I — / say Bravo ! for the Japa- 
nese ! Read that, and see how those English at 
Wei-Hai-Wei loaded a ship with medicines and 
hospital supplies, and rushed over to Dalny as 
soon as they heard of Stoessel's surrender. And 



"GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE !" W5 

the Japanese said: 'Go away. You cannot come 
in here. We don't want you. W^e have medicines 
and supplies and stores of our own, all ready and 
waiting, to take in to the Port Arthur hospitals. 
It has all been prearranged.' Prearranged ! Ah ! 
The devil himself must put these ideas into their 
yellow heads so long beforehand. Prearranged! 
If the snub to the British had been prearranged, 
I could love them. Yes, love my enemy for slap- 
ping the British face. It was not humanity that 
took those English over with their accursed hospi- 
tal ship. No, they wanted to get in there and see 
Port Arthur in its disorder; to gloat over the 
Russians in their disaster. They sneaked back 
to Chefoo, escorted by a torpedo boat, and they 
saw — probably the Golden Hill, through their 
binocles ! Good !" 

Vladimir and Grievsky, and the older officers, 
who knew the Franco-Prussian war in all its de- 
tails, in their cadet days, and also Plevna, are 
greatly concerned about these surrendered pris- 
oners at Port Arthur. The Japanese cannot care 
for so many Europeans here in Japan, they say. 
It will be impossible to get foreign food for this 
army. The Russian prisoners now outnumber all 
the Europeans in all the treaty ports of Japan, 
put together ; and the markets are strained as it is. 
If Germany could not decently care for the French 
prisoners in 1870, how are the Japanese going 



206 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

to care for these thousands of Russian prisoners? 
If, in the heart of Europe, the prisoners of war 
died of hunger and cold, and epidemics of smallpox 
and typhoid, at every place of internment in 
Germany, what must we look forward to here? 

The Japanese had prearranged everything. 
Even the champagne for the treaty negotiators 
went ashore with the first landing-party in May — 
perhaps, too, the pair of chickens that gallant, 
old Nogi sent first-off to the supposedly starving 
Stoessel, only to have his messenger deafened with 
the crowing of Madame StoessePs great flock of 
fowls raised for sale in the local market. The 
quarantine station in the straits of Shimonoseki 
was ordered enlarged at the instant the capitula- 
tion was signed. All, all was prearranged. 

Lists of the spoils of war are published day by 
day, and we are the more dumfounded. How 
dare that Stoessel surrender our fortress? How 
could any man take to Chefoo for him, and tele- 
graph to Europe, those whimpering messages that 
all were suffering hunger and blood-poisoning, and 
that only 4,000 men were effective for military 
service ? 

Esper and Loris, who knew Port Arthur in July, 
are consumed with a fury that is not good for 
either of them. It is hard to beat out and wear 
out such a rage, and passion, in the restraint and 
bounds of a prisoner's narrow quarters. "Ah! if 



"GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE !" SOT 

I could get away. Go away, and walk versts and 
versts over the country alone, and curse and scream 
in the forest by myself, I could stand this better. 
But to be in paper walls, in sound of a sentry, in 
sight of people, other men, my enemies, and to 
maintain decent calmness and self-control! It is 
too much." 

The Japanese official reports tabulate things 
with great minuteness. Every man, every ton of 
food, each piece of ammunition and piece of cloth- 
ing, every gun, wagon, electric light and intrench- 
ing tool, is put down in plain figures. Every ship, 
regiment, and battery is given by name, with the 
numbers of officers arid men surrendering ; so many 
of this Siberian Rifles Regiment, so many of that ; 
so many of Mixed Regim.ents, of Kwangtung Artil- 
lery, of gendarmes and Voluunteers. Even the 
17,000 men in hospitals are put down in de- 
tail, and I read : "5,625 scurvy patients" ! 
Scurvy, in a fortress provisioned for two years, 
without lime juice or onions ! Scurvy ! that Stoessel 
mysteriously called "blood-poisoning" ! Twelve 
hundred and sixty-one officers have surrendered; 
or rather, Stoessel has surrendered them. And 
that fine old samurai, General Nogi, bade them 
retain their swords. There was Bushido in its 
finest flowering ! It is solace when an officer has to 
yield, that he yields to one worthy of honour. I 
wish Nogi were our General ! Grievsky holds daily 



208 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

court-martials and delivers fit sentences for 
Stoessel on earth, and provides hot fires eternal, 
in the world to come ; throwing in duels and insults 
here, and picturesque arrangements of red coals 
and blue flames hereafter. 

Even the Japanese despise Stoessel for his sur- 
render, and smile scorn at the 664< officers, who 
have taken the oath and will return to Russia on 
parole. Stoessel heads the list of these cowards ; 
and his tools, Reiss and Fock, also go with him. 
Share the fate of the men who fought for him and 
under him? Not Stoessel. 

And then that nauseating message to the Czar: 
"Great Sovereign, forgive. We have done all that 
was humanly possible. Judge us ; but be mer- 
ciful" ! 

He must have rehearsed that bit of rhodomon- 
tade, ever since the place was cut off. He got his 
own Third Division sent up to Haicheng, and he 
meant to follow them, but they cut the railway 
and he had to stay. Smirnoff was the real com- 
mander of the fort, and he would never have sur- 
rendered. Loris calls him a fighter of the old 
school — grim, resolute, a good match for Nogi. 
The Japanese think that Stoessel should commit 
suicide. I think so too. 

It does us all good to have Grievsky thunder 
and storm at Stoessel. While he was grinding his 
teeth and flinging his arms to-day, the Japanese 



"GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE 1" S09 



interpreter, who stood blinking through his spec- 
tacles at this exhibition of force and passion, broke 
in: "We admire you that you think so, Colonel 
Grievsky. We do not admire General Stoessel, 
that he deserts his men in captivity," and Grievsky 
fell upon the astonished little man, embraced him, 
and kissed him loudly on either cheek. The shouts 
that followed were welcome relief to our tense 
nerves. 



CHAPTER XXIV 
"KINGS IN EXILE^' 

Friday, January 13th. 

^ I^HE Contessa was baptised a member of the 
-*" Orthodox Church last week in Kioto. That 
was news for Lyov that roused him a bit from the 
awful depression and gloom that has weighed 
upon all during this dreary, cold fortnight. 

To-day — unlucky thirteenth day, by the new 
calendar, in the midst of our Russian New Year's 
rejoicings by another — the first of the Port 
Arthur captives are to arrive. I do not believe 
that, in their wildest dreams, the Japanese ex- 
pected anything like this wholesale surrender at 
Port Arthur. Only Bazaine at Metz is any inci- 
dent for comparison, and the dishonour is equal, if 
our numbers are short of the French army handed 
over by a feeble commander. Where will they ever 
put this Port Arthur army.? How guard and 
feed.? They have enlarged our hospital, ward by 
ward. Temples have been leased, and now they are 
building officers' quarters at Oguri, at the far end 
of town beyond the railway terminus. Three 
thousand captives in all will come to Matsuyama, 

310 



"KINGS IN EXILE" 211 

but at first we heard that S3OOO sick and wounded 
were coming to the hospital alone, and Andrew 

Y went wild. "I cannot feed them. I cannot 

feed them. My kitchen will not boil and cook for 
that many more/' cried the ex-marshal of the nobil- 
ity, present chef of our barracks. "I resign. I 
must retire. I cannot cook for so many. It is 
impossible, impossible," he said, growing as excited 
over his cooking pots as Grievsky does over 
Stoessel's villainies. 

We get some grim laughter out of the situation, 
but seriously, we do not see how the Japanese are 
going to provide foreign food, even plain bread 
and beef for all these additional ones. Our mujiks 
are big eaters. They eat much bread. They want 
soup and cabbages, and such strong food. They 
will eat Japan out in a month. The missionaries 
say that beef, chickens, potatoes, milk, eggs, and 
flour are all dearer here since the horios came; 
although everything went up once in price, the 
instant the war began. Shops of foreign goods 
have doubled in numbers since the New Year, and 
all Nagasaki, which has been in depression since the 
loss of the large Russian trade, has come up to 
Matsuyama with foreign goods and curios to sell. 

Grievsky, who was with SkobelefF at Plevna, and 
knows what happened after that surrender, says 
that the Japanese cannot possibly care for these 
4O5OOO prisoners, and that we shall all suffer for 



n'2 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

it. "It will be rice and fish for the whole lot of us 
before long," says our prophet of woes. "The 
situation will soon horrify the civilised world. 
When the Germans could not manage the problem 
in 1870, and our own Russian army, with the 
sovereign and his staff at hand, could not do well 
by 30,000 Turkish prisoners at Plevna, what can 
these people do? 

"When the Turkish surrendered at Plevna they 
were marched out to the open fields beyond the 
town, divided into three herds like cattle, and sen- 
tries marched around them. It was midwinter 
then, also; wet snow t)n the ground, damp, 
cold, miserable Balkan weather. Fortunately, 
there's no snow at Port Arthur, they say ; dry 
cold and bright sunshine, — a climate like 
Peking's. 

"At Plevna, our own Russian soldiers were short 
of winter clothing and blankets, and were glad to 
get into the town and the shelter of Turkish 
houses and barracks. Imagine, then, the poor 
Turks in the open fields in December without 
shelter or covering, and no food at all, for three 
days and nights ! It was terrible ; but it was war. 
Hundreds died of exposure and starvation ; for 
there they stood or lay on the wet snow — sick and 
wounded as well. Each morning, they moved the 
droves to fresh pasture ground, in lieu of clean- 
ing — and picked up the dead and helpless. All 



"KINGS IN EXILE" 213 

the dead Turks were stripped of their clothing, 
for our own men needed it, and we buried them in 
trenches pele-mele. It was terrible! but what 
could be done? SkobelefF was off on other work, 
and the others were — not zealous. Finally, they 
did get some food for the poor creatures, and 
enough tents for the sick. It was twelve days 
before they could begin to march them in herds the 
twenty miles over to the boats on the Danube. 
Now, let us see the Japanese do better. 

"Thank God, Kondrachenko died before this 
came!" cried Grievsky heart-brokenly. "Ah! 
Kondrachenko, my dear brother ; not you, not you ! 
The others should have died first. You made the 
fortress strong. You would have held it. You 
would never have surrendered. When you died, 
the fortress died. And where did Kondrachenko 
die.? Not in a headquarters armchair. Not at 
the club. Not at the supper table, champagne 
glass in hand. He died in the casemate of his own 
fort, beside his own guns, crushed by an infernal 
Japanese shell. His officers knew then that the 
siege was done, the spirit of the garrison, the soul 
of resistance gone. It was only for the others to 
die there like him — or surrender. And to sur- 
render was so much easier — and more comfortable, 
of course, for a Stoessel.^* 

-\:> 'O' ^^r^ •<5>' 



214 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Saturday, January 31st. 

After we had worked ourselves up to the last 
degree of sympathy for their sufferings, the men 
from Port Arthur arrived. A sad-faced, woe- 
begone, broken-hearted lot of sufferers? Not at 
all! There marched, there strutted forth, from 
the little white railway station, the smartest lot of 
officers I ever saw parade the Nevsky ! — a gala 
party in full-dress uniforms, clanking their swords 
and blowing smoke rings to the sun. Was this the 
downfallen, the degraded garrison of a great 
fortress.^ Not at all. It was the triumphant 
arrival of distinguished winter tourists. Well-fed, 
superior beings they were, looking down on their 
curious surroundings. They sauntered at ease, 
stood in picturesque groups, bowing over their 
cigarettes ; and the nice, kindly Japanese, who 
had come so full of sympathy for the poor Tiorios, 
were nonplussed. I was too. These were not 
prisoners. Oh, no ! These were jiot the men I had 
in fancy seen slinking and crouching, hiding from 
the light of day, fearing to meet a Russian's 
reproachful eye — not the men I had fancied extenu- 
ating, explaining, and fleeing from the irate 
Grievsky, lest he throttle them on the spot. The 
revulsion of feeling was so abrupt and complete 
that I felt myself verging towards hysterical 
laughter ; and I fled from the sight. It was not 
a dramatic scene at all, this landing of Port 



"KINGS IN EXILE" 215 

Arthur's proud garrison in Japan. There was 
nothing tragic or soul-stirring about it at all. 
Verestchagin could not have made an historic pic- 
ture of it. One artillery officer brought his little 
daughter, who had been his companion in one of the 
high forts all through the siege. The mother died 
as the siege began, and when the surrender came, 
where could he send her.? With whom.f^ General 
Nogi consented, and the little daughter of the 
battery came to Japan. Another artillerist 
brought with him his tiny nephew, three years old, 
orphaned of both father and mother since June. 
Poor baby! Poor mite! Wide-eyed and joyful in 
his miniature Cossack uniform, complete to felt 
over-boots, leather and fur coat and tall fur cap, 
he trotted along beside an indulgent Japanese 
officer. 

A few of the rank and file were pale and sickly- 
looking, sad- faced and silent ; but these were 
bleached from long service in covered trenches, 
in casemates and galleries underground, not from 
starvation or scurvy. All these were sad and 
silent, partly from dull fear of what might befall 
them here in an unchristian land, and from the 
habit of silence which the continued roar of guns 
and shells had imposed. They formed in lines, 
were counted by smart little Japanese officers who 
barely reached to their shoulders ; and, at the 
word of command, these huge creatures in fur 



216 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

bonnets and sheepskins, moved off briskly, obedient 
to one master as to another. The people in the 
streets looked on open-mouthed at these hairy, 
furry giants, who so overtopped them. And the 
contrast ! Seeing our giants beside these pigmies, 
I kept asking myself again and again — How had 
it happened ? How could it be ? 

They did not bear themselves as captives. Not 
they. They walked like kings. Kings in exile. 
Yermoloff, in his fur coat and gros bonnet, would 
have made four of those who stood guard over 
him, and children gaped with awe at our giant 
defender of the Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre 
Hill. 



CHAPTER XXV 
DARK DAYS 

Sunday, January 22nd. 
'np^HESE have been exciting days. All that we 
-■■ have wondered about is known, all the 
mysteries are laid bare. Grievsky is a merciless 
judge and prosecutor, and the poor officers in 
bandages might well wish they had been left in 
the Port Arthur hospitals. Every technical de- 
tail and problem is dwelt on by the hour, every 
feat of engineering must be sketched for him and 
diagrams made. There were no sallies, but he 
repels all the attacks over again, and as an en- 
gineering chief, his heart is in the trenches, the 
galleries, caponieres, and redoubts of the forts. 
The working of searchlights and shooting of fish 
torpedoes by naval men do not meet with his 
approval. That was unwarranted trespassing on 
engineer's ground by those sailors. "Ugh ! I'd 
like to see them shooting any of their water toys 
from my batteries." 

A poor lieutenant, now in No. 5 ward, was on 
the bridge of the next ship when the Petropavlo'vsk 
struck the mine. He heard one explosion, saw the 

217 ■ 



nS AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

ship stagger, wallow, and push her nose down into 
the sea. He saw the crew leap from the decks ; 
he helped rescue them, even that bawling calf of a 
Cyril Vladimirovitch, who was a good swimmer 
and not hurt, yet who bellowed and roared until 
he was saved; who fought off and prevented the 
rescue of many a better fellow. "Save me ! Save 
me !" he bellowed in fright, "I am the Grand Duke 
Cyril," and he kicked away the wounded sailors as 
he climbed in the boat, beat them away with an 
oar, and beat the boat's crew until they did as he 
bid and rowed him to land, and left the wounded 
to struggle and drown. 

"No one seems to have seen Vassili Verestchagin 
after the ship went down. Ah ! My God ! to 
think of his being allowed to go there, to risk his 
life with that fleet. To lose him, was to lose one 
who had value in the eyes of all the world. Vassili 
should have lived to paint the scene, with Cyril 
beating wounded men away from the life-boats. 
Cyril! worthy descendant of that Glottstop- 
Holstein tribe ! Cyril will demand the life-saving 
medal now, I suppose. Did he not save his own 
life? Give him a St. George ! and the St. Anne, by 
all means ! 

''Ah! has! My compliments to the imperial Rus- 
sian navy! — Even to that Rojestvensky idling by 
the coral groves of Madagascar." 

Four Russian surgeons came over with the sick 



DARK DAYS 219 

ones, as there were not enough Japanese surgeons 
and interpreters. The Japanese were surprised 
that the surgeons were not Jews. "Yes," said the 
interpreter at the barracks to me, "all the sur- 
geons are Jews except these, just as all the 
engineers are Poles." 

It is cold now, cloudy and gloomy — the "grey 
days" of Rome. The wooden houses are as cold 
as stone palaces, and much more draughty, — and 
all is woe. Vladimir frets and grows feverish 
again, after we had thought the tertian entirely 
broken, and he sleeps but little. One knee is still 
rigid and useless ; his spine is agony when he walks 
or tries to lift his knee, and he can only shuffle his 
feet over the floor. All my massage and efforts 
seem useless, now that this penetrating damp cold 
has gone in to his joints. The officers begged that 
something be done to make the barracks more 
comfortable; for draughts suck up through the 
thin floor and walls, where the thatch roofs join 
loosely. All are sneezing and coughing. We made 
a tent or canopy over Vladimir's bed, which kept 
him secure from cold currents while he lay there; 
but he was exposed to a dozen draughts when he 
lay on the long chair. 

It is absurd that, here in semi-tropical Japan, 
with palm trees and oranges on every side, and my 
camellia hedge in splendid bloom — that we should 
feel the cold indoors as we have never felt it in 



220 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Russia. The floors are always cold to the feet, for 
the wind has full sweep through the open air-space 
beneath and up through the cracks. The longer 
the ingenious, portable oil and charcoal stoves 
burn, and give out comforting heat, the more the 
pine boards shrink, until one sees the sky in hair 
lines all along the walls. It is impossible to save 
the pneumonia cases, and I watched one poor 
Siberian to his death the other morning, when wet 
snowflakes preceded a chill, rainy day, that 
seemed the dreariest we had known. 

When I had made Vladimir safe and warm for 
the night, and was leaving, Nesan came out from 
the chemist's room with her bottles, and walked 
with me past the chancery, to tell me that the chief- 
surgeon had been ordered to command the great 
hospitals at Dalny. This was the last blow. 

I waved my hand to Nesan and ran out into the 
darkness and rain, unable to repress my tears. 
The coolie, crouching under the lee of the guard- 
house, called to me to wait, while he lighted his 
paper lantern and turned the back of the jin- 
rikisha to the driving rain. He tied me fast in 
the tiny interior with the rain apron ; and, chuck- 
ling cheerily at the misadventures and the weather, 
pattered with bare feet down the shining, wet road. 
His worn rubber coat showed one thin, rain-soaked, 
blue cotton garment beneath it ; and the bare knees 
caught the lantern light as they swung back and 



DARK DAYS S21 

forth with the regularity of pendulums. Still 
chirruping like a cheerful bird, and laughing, as 
if the raindrops he wiped from the edge of the 
hood were precious things, lucky jewels, he was 
gathering, he helped me out at my door. I looked 
at him, as the shoji slid open and sent the full 
lamplight on the ugly little scrap of a man. He 
was old, since all the young jinrikisha coolies have 
gone to the war, or over to Ujina to enjoy the 
high wages at the government stores ; yet he was 
cheerful and happy, contented with the hardest lot 
that I can think of for a human being. "You 
have no trouble, I can see that," I said to him. "A 
full pipe and a rice bowl, and the dark, wet, cold 
night is the same as sunny noonday to you." 

''Okasama, my only son went to the war. He 

died at Ni San Rei [Two-Hundred-and-Three- 

Metre Hill] that last time. I am old and my wife 

is feeble, and this huruma feeds us all — all — my 

son's wife and his three children. Although the 

httle box [cremation ashes and relics] came three 

weeks ago, I have not yet had the priests say the 

prayers at my house, and his friends go with us to 

the temple. I have known much sorrow, truly, 

Okasama,'' The old kurumaya bowed with the 

grace of a noble, proudly. With dignity, he 

hfted the paper lantern and hooked it to the 

shafts. It was a reproof that covered me with 

shame. 



^22 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

"Stop ! Stop !" I said. "Come for me in the 
morning at nine o'clock, and I want to send now 
some little things to your son's children. Anna, 
make ready plenty, much, a big Japanese supper 
for three times three little children, and give 
Icuruyama san some hot tea first. He waited so 
long in the rain for me, he is cold and hungry. 
Do not forget that." 

My feet of lead dragged me to my room, when 
the soft-spoken, purring little housemaid had 
changed my shoes. I sat there in the cold, forlorn, 
alone — alone. Vladimir sick and alone too — far 
away in the cold. Alone ! A black night of sorrow 
encompassed me. I thought of the old kurumaya, 
the sick wife, the lost son, and the family depend- 
ent on the one feeble old man. And he so cheerful 
and courteous, while he sat cold, wet, and of 
course hungry, waiting for me in the rain. I 
began to weep quietly, and when Anna came in and 
asked why, I burst into violent sobbing and 
alarmed her with a nervous collapse that I have 
not approached in many, many years. 

It was Anna who went out in the morning at 
nine to find the American pope, and ask how I 
should relieve the old kurumaya; or rather, how 
much money, and in what form I could put it, to 
meet the expenses of the honourable, military 
funeral. It must not come from me, a Russian, 
but anonymously, through some Red Cross mem- 



DARK DAYS 223 

ber. Would one of them do it for me? or ask 
Madame Takasu to do it ? 

In the end, I sent twenty, immaculate, new one- 
yen notes, folded in pure white paper, accom- 
panied by a great bouquet of green sakaki 
branches; and the next Sunday there was a 
funeral, with the local band in attendance, start- 
ing from Madame Takasu's own courtyard, where 
the priests held a short service over the httle 
wooden box that came from Port Arthur. The 
old man marched in stiff silk hakama, leading a 
sedate, splendidly-striding boy of eight, as chief 
mourner and guardian of the tablets. A concourse 
of friends trailed away through the town and 
across the belt of fields to a temple near Dogo, 
and the funeral party from the castle barracks 
sounded the bugles and rendered the final honours 

there. 

I shall not tell Vladimir of this for a long time, 
and I hope his brother officers may never find it 
out. I do not like their attitudes at times when I 
am only trying to be just to these people, who are 
kind to me beyond all that I could ever have 
imagined. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

FROM PORT ARTHUR 

Sunday, January 39th. 
^TT^HE Contessa's pretty post cards come daily, 
-*- and Lyov is for the most part steeped in 
reveries and interested only in his own convales- 
cence. He sits up in a long chair each day, and 
one arm is free of its bandages and is subject to 
my massage treatment. He says he shall ask to 
be sent to Kioto, as soon as he is able to leave the 
barracks. 

The arrival of all the Port Arthur officers at 
once last week was like the arrival of the Court 
at Yalta. Each day, some one has a surprising 

rencontre. Andrew Y was half smothered 

one day by a visitor who cried : "Oh ! Uncle ! 
Why, Uncle ! I did not know that you were in the 
army again !" And it was his nephew. "Saints 
above !" cried Andrew, stupefied. "No more did 
I know that you were in Port Arthur !" 

They all have photographs which tell the story 
better than words, for, although they were per- 
mitted to bring away only a portmanteau and a 
travelling rug, all came out with their pockets 

334 



FROM PORT ARTHUR 225 

stuffed and their clothing filled with traps. "I 
was a standing column of photographic prints 
and film negatives," said one officer ; "and my 
lens was such a good one that I put it in my 
pocket and will buy a new camera over here." 
Many mourn for their books, pictures, and musical 
instruments, which they had to leave behind. "Oh ! 
it did break my heart to leave my pictures," one 
told me. "I had them brought out from my 
Kronstadt house as soon as I was billeted for 
Port Arthur, three years ago. I paid insurance 
on a value of 50,000 roubles; and then — I had 
to come awa3^ and leave them all on the walls. 
Leave them for the Japanese to use as targets, I 
suppose. That is what the Prussian officers did 
to the paintings in French chateaux. 

"We were all limited in the amount of luggage, 
but luckily it was cold weather and we could wear 
two and three sets of clothes. It was like a fete 
day review, when we left Port Arthur. Every one 
wore his best uniforms, and there was elation and 
excitement in just getting out of that hole, where 
we had seen such horrors. No one had luggage 
save the Stoessels. And, Mother of Mercy ! how 
the Barina had made good her last opportunity ! 
She had a little garden and cow, you know, and 
some chickens ; and headquarters milk and eggs 
sold at rising prices all through the siege. 

"The first any one suspected of Stoessel's inten- 



226 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

tion was when the servants brought word that the 
Barina was packing her trunks. She brought 
away with her twenty-two boxes, and the rest of 
us, each only a rug and portmanteau. The regu- 
lations said, 'Retaining their swords and carry- 
ing the same baggage allowance as Japanese 
officers of corresponding rank' — which is sixty 
pounds only. Stoessel asked General Nogi, at the 
dinner table, after the signature, if the Barina 
could take all her own things away with her, and 
the old Spartan said chivaJrously that Madame 
Stoessel should take what she pleased without 
regarding regulations— other ladies, with children, 
the same. Nogi prearranged those things like a 
kind father. Every officer's wife with a baby 
had a soldier allotted her as servant. Others, a 
soldier to each two children. 

"The Barina packed up everything in their 
establishment, and her twenty-two trunks so filled 
up a railway wagon that twenty Cossacks, who 
ought to have been in that wagon, had to ride on 
the platforms. But not a trunk would she carry 
for any one else. Not she. Not a picture, an 
embroidery, or old Peking treasure would she take 
back to Russia for any one of their own staff. We 
all went down to Dalny on the one train that morn- 
ing. The six officers of highest rank were to ride 
in the one railway carriage ; but, when old 
Smirnoff found that he was to ride in with Stoessel 



FROM PORT ARTHUR 227 

and the Barina, he said loudly: 'No, no, I will 
have nothing to do with that General,' and jumped 
into the carriage crowded with orderlies. And 
Bieli and the others with him ! The Japanese were 
fearfully embarrassed. They had not prearranged 
any such scenes. They did not know which to 
apologise to first. Smirnoff waits until he returns 
to Russia, and then Stoessel's sword of honour 
and Black Eagle of the Kaiser will look very 
small. 

"We held a council on the 27th, and as there 
were ample provisions, enough for two months at 
least, we voted not to surrender. Stoessel did not 
fear his council of generals and colonels. Oh! 
No ! But there was some one he did fear ; one who 
commanded him to surrender — 'She-Who-Must- 
Be-Obeyed' ! In fear of the Barina, by stealth, 
without letting us know, he sent the messengers out 
to Nogi. We were watching, and when his Cos- 
sacks rode out toward the Japanese lines and began 
to display a flag of truce, a dozen binocles were on 
them. They telephoned down from Wangtai to 
headquarters to ask what the parley was about. 
No one at headquarters knew. The next morning 
we all knew. We all saw the procession of shame 
ride out to surrender. 'The General surrenders, 
the fortress does not,' said Smirnoff. And Smir- 
noff was right. Smirnoff was in command of Port 
Arthur, of the fortress. Stoessel should have 



228 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

surrendered only himself and his Siberian troops 
and gone out. I am sick of all these horrors, of 
the sight of death, the smell of blood and corpses. 
If I ever get back to Russia, I shall leave the army. 
I am tired of war." 

Another friend commanded the battery on the 
Golden Hill above the harbour entrance. "For a 
year I lived on that hilltop. Everything I saw ; all 
save the first part of the night attack by the Japa- 
nese that caused the war. I was down in the city 
that night" — and we interrupted with laughter 
in which he had finally to join, "What sights 
there were from my Col d'Or ! I miss my lookout, 
my great sweep of sky and sea, and the horizon 
with its Japanese ships, now that I live in a damp 
temple with low, overhanging eaves, and see only 
a stone path, some gravestones, and a granite 
image of Buddha sitting in the rain. 

"And what devils those Japanese were ! Fear ! 
They don't know the word. Came right in under 
our guns, into the muzzles of the guns of the lower 
forts, to sink their ships ! That American who 
tried to sink a ship in the Cuban harbour to block 
the Spanish fleet was only one, and only tried it 
once. Here were Japanese by the dozen, the hun- 
dred, coming at it again and again. I wish we 
had some naval officers of that same kind ; some one 
who could have followed Togo's fleet and discovered 
his naval base. To think that Togo kept his 



FROM PORT ARTHUR 2S9 

ships as near us as the ElKot Islands ! and Starke 
and Oukhtomsky never found it out ! 

"Ah, it was beautiful up there on my Col d'Or ! 
Moonlight and searchlight made sea and land as 
bright as day. Then star rockets and burning 
parachutes ! It was fete Venitienne all the time. I 
have seen all the spectacular side of war. 

"I watched Makaroff go out and come back, 
and watched his ships manoeuvre about just below 
us, to allow them to work their way back into the 
harbour, one by one. RaschefFski had his camera 
out, for he had long been waiting for just that 
chance at the whole fleet in the open. Oh, every- 
thing w^as quite right that day — the sun just high 
enough, and the sea so calm! They were racing 
signal flags up and down, giving the orders to 
each ship, when I saw the PetropavlomJc give a 
queer pitch, a jerk. The officers on the bridge 
threw up their arms, and others ran out of the 
towers and gun-turrets. The ship gave another 
jerk, the water boiled around it, and the muffled 
sound of an explosion came up to us. 'Great God !' 
cried Rascheff*ski, 'she has struck a mine !' and he 
whipped out his plate-holder, turned it, and drew 
the slide. As he touched the bulb, a heavier boom 
sounded, and a cloud of black smoke closed around 
the Petropavlovsk. I could not breathe nor utter 
a sound, as I realised that the flagship of our fleet, 
our Admiral, and our Grand Duke were in that 



230 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

black cloud on the water ; that the huge iron ship 
was sinking, and the wounded crew drowning 
before mj eyes. I saw the black nose of the ship 
rear up and then dive down. The smoke drifted 
away, and then men and wreckage came to the 
top. 

"I turned away for a second, all my nerve gone 
with the horrible sight witnessed in just two 
minutes and a half. And that cold-blooded devil of 
a Rascheffski was putting away his last plate- 
holder ! While every one else on that parapet was 
transfixed with horror and speechless, Rascheffski 
had been exposing his plates, clicking his camera as 
coolly as at a review. 

" 'How fortunate that I had my plate-holders 
full,' he said, 'I have made six exposures !' He 
had taken one picture and was ready for another, 
when the Petropavlovsk gave her first rebound from 
the mine. The same afternoon he developed and 
printed, and the pictures went on to his Majesty at 
Petersburg, and all Europe has since seen them. 
We have prints from them, too. 

"It was a great time for photography, there at 
Port Arthur. Those materials never gave out. 
You see the prints here of the successive stages of 
the bombardment — of the oflScers' club in May, 
and the same club in December ! — Ah ! those last 
days at Port Arthur ! The sad pictures of the 
Setastopol at bay outside the harbour ! Each night 



FROM PORT ARTHUR ^Sl 

our searchlights showed those devils of Japanese 
nosing around her with their torpedo boats — 
wolves around a dying stag. And then we saw 
the wounded Sevastopol dragged out and sunk, at 
the foot of our hill ! 

"And nowj it is all over. We are here." 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NOT 
SMOOTH IN JAPAN 

Tuesday, January 31st. 

THE surrendered officers all grumble at their 
crowded quarters and — at the cold ! 

Oh ! how these grizzled, old Siberians complain 
of the cold ! of the rigors of a Japanese winter ! 
with the thermometer toji degrees above the frost 
point ! When it is forty degrees by my English 
thermometer, they shiver and gather in the sun, 
like so many Neapolitan lazzaroni. They put all 
the officers out in on^ common ward for three days, 
while carpenters sealed up the cracks and joints in 
the flimsy woodwork and made the place snug 
and comfortable. And that was an experience ! 

At the time of the surrender. General Nogi said 
that the Port Arthur officers should retain their 
swords. At Matsuyama the commandant required 
them to deliver up their swords, as the regulations 
for prisoners of war required it. He. could not 
let prisoners go armed ; and as none of the officers 
previously here retained their swords, he could not 
make such a distinction for the Port Arthur men. 



TRUE LOVE IN JAPAN 233 

The officers protested, and the commandant tele- 
graphed to the War Minister at Tokyo. Word 
came back that they must be disarmed, hke the 
other prisoners, and their swords put in safe keep- 
ing until the end of the war. Any resistance was, 
of course, useless, but some of the young officers 
foolishly resisted, against the protests and advice 
of senior officers, and were disarmed by force, and 
are now imprisoned ; others broke their swords and 
threw the pieces on the ground; and some laid the 
swords on a table and turned away. "You may 
take my sword behind my back, like a thief. I will 
not yield it," said one. Those who had the swords 
of St. Anne wept, kissed the swords of honour their 
sovereign had given them, and removed the red- 
and-white sword knots, to wear as decorations on 
their breasts. I think it was chiefly bad manage- 
ment and bad manners which made all the trouble. 
As Vladimir says, the chief-surgeon could have 
gone, taken the swords away, and left every officer 
his friend ; but the commandant is of another type 
and school, arrogant as a Prussian, hard, tact- 
less, and almost contemptuous in manner to these 
new captives, to the "surrendered officers," as all 
call those who came from Port Arthur, in dis- 
tinction from the "captured officers," who were 
here before January. 

One poor fellow wailed to Grievsky, "We know 
the Japanese all despise us. They think us 



gS4 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

cowards to surrender and come here as prisoners. 
By their code, we should all have committed suicide 
when Stoessel sold us out. But we Russians have 
not the courage for cold steel in the stomach, just 
because a battle or a fort has been lost." 

With three hundred idle, unhappy, homesick, 
heartsick officers here, I fear more trouble. All 
are depressed, morbidly sensitive, and their nerves 
are on edge. They are looking for insults and 
humiliations ; and of course they find them or 
imagine them. They will not see anything that 
the Japanese do for them in the right light. They 
persist in attributing hostile, sinister motives to 
them, and credit them with a wish to insult and 
persecute them. I can talk my one or two stray 
visitors into a more reasonable frame of mind, but 
I cannot get at, nor harangue, the whole three 
hundred in the temples and quarters in town. If 
they would only let me go around and visit them at 
each place — each etape Grievsky bitterly calls the 
places of detention — I am sure that I could pacify 
some and put them in a better frame of mind. It 
would be better if there were at least one of our 
own higher and older officers here to have some 
authority and control over these young hotheads, 
some one to appeal to, to act as arbiter and spokes- 
man. But here are only a few colonels, and the 
rest are all majors, captains, and lieutenants. 

I asked the surgeon why they do not send the 



TRUE LOVE IN JAPAN 235 

two crazy officers back to Russia, as they did the 
seventy crippled and infirm men in October? But 
he says : "No ! No ! Too many would go insane, 
if that was a way to get to Russia. We cannot be 
too sure about these two, sometimes." 

The reaction after the tremendous excitement 
and long nerve strain of Port Arthur is too much 
for many of the newcomers. Many wish now that 
they had given parole and gone to Europe. 
Although our officers are not such sportsmen and 
athletes as the English, they complain bitterly of 
the want of exercise. "Think of it ! Forty of us 
walking up and down, up and down among the 
crowded gravestones, taking our turns at sentry 
go. I wish I had gone with Stoessel. I never did 
care about this war, anyhow. La guerre n'est pas 
gai! I was on the point of going to give my 
parole, when I heard that old Fock was actually 
going as prisoner to Japan. After that, I had to 
play heroic too. Old granny! When Fock 
urged the council to surrender in September, the 
first time we lost Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre 
Hill, he had had his fill of war and battle then ; but 
Kondrachenko and the brave ones were so fierce 
that he never proposed it again, although he would 
have been glad to do so at any time. They were 
all hard on him, except Stoessel and Reiss. Fock 
is afraid to go back to Russia, so he sticks to 
Smirnoff as his only hope; shares his same fate, 



236 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

copies his brave conduct. Yet Smirnoff won't 
speak to him ! And there they are both at 
Nagoya ! Each has an archbishop's palace to Hve 
in, and we, the victims of Stoessel and Fock, are 
crowded together here Kke Siberian convicts. No 
landscape gardens, no tennis courts for us." 

The Japanese find that the rank and file cannot 
get on peaceably together, because of their differ- 
ences of race and religion ; so that, even in the 
hospital, they must separate them, and put the 
Jews, Poles, Finns, and the Baltic provincers by 
themselves. Then we have Circassians, and every 
kind of a Central Asian you can think of in Cos- 
sack dress, on to Lyov's Buriat Mongol, with the 
placid face of Buddha — that Osip, who ought to 
wear a lama's brocade robe and say his rosary. 
His face is so serenely the Buddha of Japanese art 
that I long to gild his face, lacquer him, and put 
him in some temple. 

The Japanese show marked favour to the Jews, 
Poles, Finns, and Baltic provincers, because they 
do less fighting and more reading and writing 
than the others ; use more paper and pencils and 
notebooks ; take more baths, wash more clothes, and 
try to occupy themselves. I said this to the inter- 
preter one day, and he said the Japanese ought 
to be kinder to these non-orthodox ones because 
they were treated so badly in Russia and in the 
army 1 Madame Takasu even told me that the 



TRUE LOVE IN JAPAN 237 

Finns and Baltic-ers are Christians (meaning 
Protestants), the same as the American mis- 
sionaries. 

Two Russian ladies, who have Hved in Port 
Arthur all through the siege, wives of engineer 
officers, have asked to come here to live. The in- 
terpreter told me, and he significantly added: 
"They are from Baltic provinces, Okasama, They 
are real Christians, Lutherans they call them!" 
One of them has a daughter, sixteen years old, 
who served as a hospital nurse during the last 
week of the siege. The other brings a little baby, 
born during the last weeks of the siege. Thirty 
such siege-born infants were sent to Nagasaki, and 
good, kind, old Nogi let the mothers choose thirty 
soldiers to go on with them to Russia as nurses. 

And now for our romance, a real storybook kind 
of romance. When one wounded officer reached 
the quarantine station and read the orders for 
steam baths ashore, he sent word that as his 
orderly was a woman she could not go ashore 
with the Cossacks. The Japanese drew long faces, 
they stood aghast. Romance of that sort did not 
appeal to them, "Not Cossack ! Not man ! 
Naruhodo! Not wife! Naruhodo, these Chris- 
tians are queer !" There was a tragic parting on 
deck. Officer and orderly kissed and embraced 
and wept loudly, regardless of the Japanese on- 
lookers. The orderly was quarantined after all 



288 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

the transports were gone, and they have sent her 
to the poor French Consul in Kobe. She waits, 
the Consul says, until the Blessed Virgin shall in- 
tervene, for he can do nothing. 

"Ah, I am here in prison, and my bride is in 
Kobe," wails the poor fellow as he lies in the 
hospital. 

Vladimir is not sympathetic, and in his dry, 
extra-dry manner advises me to let the thing alone, 
not to mix myself up in this affair, which is not 
our affair. But I still hear that weak and fretful 
voice repeating it : "Ah ! I am here in prison, and 
my bride is in Kobe." 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

DAILY LIFE 

Thursday, February 3nd. 
XT 7E were talking, at tea to-day, of the little 
' ^ Amazon who followed her lover down to 
Port Arthur and into captivity, and which seems 
so romantic to me, in this twentieth-century time. 
Jjoris told of so many "maids of Saragossa," in 
Macedonia and the Balkans, that I had to recede 
from my heroics over the little Siberian. They 
cited so many cases that it seemed as though 
Russian women were all "warriors bold." Several 
of the battery commanders had their families 
living with them in the high forts around Port 
Arthur. The officers said it was safer there ; they 
wanted their families with them, if anything hap- 
pened ; and the air was better on the hills through 
the summer. Children lived in the forts ; romped 
in the casements and galleries, and around the 
magazines ; played tag over the cannons, and got 
in the way of the gunners during action. They 
were delighted with the novelties of warfare, 
wanted to work the machine guns, to see the fish 
torpedoes swim in the air, and to turn the search- 

339 



240 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

lights. They waited up to watch the star rockets 
and parachutes, as if for illuminated fetes. There 
was also a sergeant's wife, who wore men's clothes 
and fought as a soldier at one of the forts. She 
was an expert shot, and when her husband was 
killed she stayed at the sights in the trenches until 
she had killed one hundred and seventeen Japanese, 
before she herself was shot by a Japanese sharp- 
shooter. 

Besides the titled women who went to Siberia 
and devotedly did all the routine work of their 
Red Cross and zemstvo hospitals, I hear of mounted 
Red Cross nurses, hardy Siberian women, who 
scour the battlefields for the wounded. I think 
Russia will wake up to and discover the real value 
of Siberia after this war, as England learned to 
appreciate her colonies after the Boer war. 

I marvelled at this presence of women in the 
battlefield, until Von Woerffel, not to let his arm 
of the service be left out of the honours, said that 
each battleship carried Red Cross sisters of 
charity, and that, when the fleet made its fiasco of 
a sortie, August 10th, it had not only carried the 
usual nurses on the ships, but the wives of many 
officers who volunteered for nurse's duties, in order 
to escape to Vladivostok. I could hardly believe 
this. Certainly there is no such Pinafore busi- 
ness in the English navy ; for I knoAv my English 
uncle could not take my aunt with him on his own 



DAILY LIFE 241 

gunboat from Cowes to Deauville — a few hours' 
trip on a summer's day. But Von Woerff el assures 
me that it is so, and that the commander of the 
Feresmet, who is at Ide-bude-machi, can assure me 
that his wife was on board during all that 10th 
of August flight, fight, and retreat. She was down 
below, while the big guns were firing, and Japa- 
nese shells were striking. Think of it! What a 
place for a woman! And think of the discipline 
maintained by an Admiral who would permit a 
Pinafore party on a battleship in action — or at 
any time! No wonder our navy has made such a 
pitiable showing all through the war; that this 
lagging Baltic fleet imagined Japanese torpedoes 
in the North Sea, and was shooting at shadows 
all the way from Libau to the Channel. If we get 
out of this without a war with England, we will be 
fortunate. It's a mercy Lord Charles did not 
attack, when he had them all in one fleet near 
Gibraltar. We of the army do not take the 
Russian navy seriously any more. I asked a Port 
Arthur man what chance Rojestvensky had 
against Admiral Togo. "The same chance exactly 
as if he came in forty-four steam launches, cargo- 
lighters, or Volga barges. For the good of Russia 
and himself he had better turn around now and 
go home, with a whole skin and all his ships above 
water. Rojestvensky is a fussy, old martinet; 
his officers all hate him and would not obey his 



242 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

orders half the time ; certainly not after that devil 
of a Togo began to be noisy and unpleasant with 
his infernal prearrangements. Sea power is not 
in our line. It is not in the genius of our race to 
go on the water. No, nor in it either ; as you see 
here in Matsuyama, when sick and well have to be 
pushed into the baths once a week. That's another 
count in the Japanese contempt. They despise 
us because we are beaten, because we do not commit 
suicide; and because our Cossacks are so dirty, 
and do not like to bathe in boiling water every 
night." 

Every a.ble-bodied civilian in Port Arthur had 
to do military duty with the Volunteers, and there 
are many tales told of what happened on this 
account in "Stoessel's satrapy." Even the mana- 
ger of the Russo-Chinese bank was ordered to 
duty. He protested, and. so Stoessel said : "Very 
wtU, I give you charge of the abattoirs." Abat- 
toirs supplying horseflesh only ! All Port Arthur 
roared with laughter, and the volunteer protested. 
"Then," said Stoessel, "you can report to Colonel 
Yermoloif for duty in the trenches on Two- 
Hundred-and-Three-Metre Hill." 

After the surrender, the Volunteers had to 
answer the roll-call like any of the regular troops, 
be counted, and march the six miles to the railway 
station. Among these Volunteers were many secret 
agents of revolutionary societies. The Siberian 



DAILY LIFE 248 

army has many such agitators, and here in deten- 
tion, they distribute their revolutionary Kterature 
freely. Grievsky thinks the Japanese should not 
permit that, and gets furious when Vladimir says 
his point is out of all rational order; that of 
course the Japanese will allow the captives liberty 
in that respect, as Japanese soldiers can read any- 
thing they please. Even in war time, their Japa- 
nese temporary censorship of the press does not 
equal what we have in Russia in time of peace; 
and there are no books barred out, to judge of 
what I saw in the bookstores at Kobe ; and any 
books we order they send us. 

The Lafcadio Hearn books that I ordered for 
hoHday gifts were brought to the barracks by one 
of the headquarters clerks, who did so because he 
was anxious to tell Vladimir that he had often 
seen that great genius when he, the clerk, was a 
student in the Imperial University at Tokyo. "He 
was my revered teacher," said the youth proudly, 
and we made the most of his visit. 

We had a laugh, too, at AkimofF, who went 
through the ward as interpreter for the Protestant 
missionaries, distributing tracts and picture books 
to the invaHds. The children in the mission schools 
in the treaty ports have made these picture scrap- 
books by thousands for the Japanese soldiers in 
hospital, and these have now greatly diverted our 
poor Cossacks, to many of whom pictures of 



244 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

European life are quite as foreign as to the Japa- 
nese. But the tracts ! They have been provided 
to win poor ignorant Russians away from the 
"gross superstitions and idolatry" of the Orthodox 
Church! Some of the tracts in Russian text, en- 
titled as temperance lectures, proved to be revo- 
lutionary literature, and were promptly burned 
by the horrified missionaries. Then the Japanese 
authorities abruptly shut down on the activities 
of a supposed philanthropist who was at the 
bottom of this way of reaching our stupid 
mujiks. This terrorist agent, masquerading as 
a benevolent old doctor, was even offering to take 
to America at the end of the war any real cultiva- 
tors of land who would settle in the further states. 
If they would only go with him, how well rid 
Russia would be of the lot, and how well it would 
serve America ! Her philanthropists got the 
Doukhobors, and they have quite enough of them, 
I hear. 

I go to the English service once a week at the 
mission house, and the officers are now arranging 
a little chapel at the hospital, where the Japanese 
Catechists of the Greek Church will hold services 
regularly. Hitherto, they have visited from ward 
to ward, and confessions and burial services have 
been their chief occupation. There is much scepti- 
cism, of course, wherever two or three really edu- 
cated Russians are gathered together ; and Nimi- 



DAILY LIFE 245 

doff, who is blunt and frank to a degree, has a way 
of setting fire to the irreligious opinions of the 
others. After one long bout, when he had led in 
denouncing the Church, as it now exists in Russia 
— all mummery — simply, an instrument for extort- 
ing money from and coercing the ignorant — they 
nearly reached the point of putting Christianity 
itself aside as an outlived delusion. 

"Oh! if the Procurator-General could only hear 
you!" Esper exclaimed, 

"Oh ! Damn the Procurator-General ! The old 
fiend ! He belongs to the Middle Ages anyhow. 
He would burn recalcitrants and unbelievers at the 
stake to-day, if he dared. His prison for priests 
is worse than burning; and there is Kavkaz and 
the Trans-Baikal for the others. I will distribute 
all the Protestant tracts I can get hold of here. 
I think it would be a good work, a real missionary 
service, to convert the imprisoned army in Japan 
to any true Christian religion." 

"But what did you do in camp, with your 
troops, if you feel that way.^^" I asked. 

"Oh ! it is part of the tactics and drill — military 
regulations. I put my men through the Mass and 
service just like any other manoeuvre. Pile up the 
drums and make an altar for the priests ; cross 
myself, just as I salute another officer ; habit — 
habit — I have often made the sign of the cross 
when I meant to salute, on the Nevsky, and often 



246 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

saluted, absent-mindedly, when I should have 
crossed. It is automatic — that's all there is in 
it. We kneel with our heads on our sword-hilts, 
and the men's heads on the rifle-butts at service 
in camp, and the priest chatters lines that my men 
surely do not understand ; nor do the popes them- 
selves, half the time. We kiss the book and march 
back, keeping step with the feet, crossing ourselves 
with our hands — both automatic. We march to 
battle crossing ourselves, because all the rest do. 
Some say their prayers honestly, I suppose, but not 
many of my class. And who has respect for a 
pope anywhere, or even for a pope's son? And 
how Christian is it for our popes to lead the attack 
with the crucifix, at the front ? Ah ! don't talk to 
me ! Our beggar of a pope at Telissu was as keen 
on the fight, had as real a blood-thirst as any 
Cossack. He screamed and shouted, and waved 
his big cross ; and when our men broke, he beat 
them with the crucifix, drove them back, made 
them stand their ground. We never could have 
retreated in such good order, if it had not been 
for that fighting pope. He and his cross saved 
us for once, even if he had broken one arm of the 
cross, when a Cossack dodged, and the holy club 
came down on a rock. To the devil with 
Pobedonostseff, and his whole bigoted tribe !" 



CHAPTER XXIX 
THE EXILED STUDENT 

Friday, February 3rd. 

T WAS down in the street, buying cotton cloth 
•^ for Andrew Y ^'s tailor shop this morn- 
ing, when I heard a cry of: ^'Matushka! Ma- 
tushha! TyotusMca! You! You! Here! In 
Japan !" 

Of all the surprises I have had, none equals this 
of finding Sandy von RathrofF, my own godchild, 
among the Port Arthur officers, "For Heaven's 
sake, Sandy, tell me .how, how you got here.^ 
Where is your uniform .^ What are you doing 
here ? How did you get away ? In mercy's name ! 
This surpasses all. Oh! You mauvais sujet! 
Here ! of all places ! Oh ! your poor mother, 
now " 

Sandy stood there smiling, as happily as if it 
were all a fete, while I was quite unnerved by 
surprises of so many kinds. The moon-faced 
sergeant, who was escorting his little flock around 
the shops, came up at the sound of our excited 
voices, and his presence brought me to my senses 
enough to explain to him in full that this was my^ 

247 



248 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

long-lost nephew, whom we had all considered dead 
in Siberia. We had, truly. 

"Tell him the whole thing. He's a good sort, 
different from the other Japanese at our place. 
They say they are better to the Jews, the Poles, 
and the disloyal ones ; and I want any credit I 
can get on that last score." When I had talked 
the sergeant into security we sat down on the red 
benches, and Sandy told me rapidly, in German, 
all that had happened to him since his exile. 

"Yes, aunt, I am more unreconcilable than ever. 
I shall always be the enemy of Nicholas Alexandro- 
vitch and all his following, although I have worn 
his uniform and taken his pay. Very small pay, 
aunt, only sixty roubles a month — less than a 
Japanese sous-lieutenant gets. Well, tyotusJilea, 
since Mr. Stripes, that is what we call that 
sergeant of ours, since he will let us talk, I must 
tell you all I can now, for I shall not get out for 
a walk for another week. There are so many of 
us in the temple and so few sergeants to chaperon 
us as we walk abroad. Oh ! it is quite like a young 
girls' school, a convent brood taking a gentle 
promenade. 'Baissez vos yeux, me s demoiselles,' 
the French governess used to say to my sisters 
when they passed the Yacht Club. Oh, dear ! will 
I ever be there again ? 

"I shall come to the hospital at once — as soon 
as they will let me, I mean. To think that you 



THE EXILED STUDENT 249 

are here! But, to begin with myself; now, ma 
tante. After I was seized, with the students who 
had been in Kazan Cathedral — while I had not been 
in there at all---I was shut up in the fortress for 
weeks. You know how my family worked for my 
release. But old Von Plehve, curses to his soul, 
and all his agents, swore against me, and I went 
with the rota to Irkutsk. They assigned me to 

the town of near . It is supposed to be 

on the railway line; but it isn't by eighteen versts. 
Well, I had to live; and the best thing was to get 
on with the authorities so well that I could escape 
— get over to China in some way. I taught school. 
I took the classes away from the drunken pope, 
and taught the little Siberians to read and write, 
some arithmetic, and some geography. The pope 
sobered up now and then, and told them Church 
history. 

"Ugh ! What discomforts ! What hideous sur- 
roundings ! What people ! What drear winter 
nights I passed ! I was desperate many a time. 
But I held my tongue, made friends with the 
authorities, and saved every kopeck I could of 
what the family sent me, and all I could earn. I 
should need money when I could escape. So I had 
one thousand roubles on me when the war began. 
And I danced a tarantelle of joy. In the con- 
fusion, I could surely get away and make my way 
into China, I thought. 



250 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

"Our governor advised me to volunteer for 
military service in Manchuria, as I would be made 
a sub-lieutenant at the start, see some good fight- 
ing, and get amnesty after the war. We expected, 
you know, a quick march down the coast, and to 
do all our little fighting in Japan. I wish you 
could have seen the troops I commanded ! Raw 
Siberian infantry, of course, for me. Such a lot 
of cutthroat brutes you never saw. No jail-yard 
of criminals could match my Siberian riflemen. 
All had bullet heads and retreating foreheads — 
prognathous skulls, and nothing in them — eyes 
like elephant's eyes. Ugh ! I am glad to be away 
from the sight of them. Thank the saints they 
are sent somewhere else in Japan, and I don't have 
to see those two-legged dolts any more, and bother 
my head with their soup and cartridges. I don't 
know that they hated me as I loathed them. Poor 
things ! They were not to blame that they wore 
the Czar's uniform and carried his gun. They ^re 
dragged off at the end of the knout for conscrip- 
tion or mobilisation, and treated like cattle. 
Kanonen-f utter they are. I am not sure they have 
souls. They seemed no higher in the scale to me 
than horses or camels — camels that talk, and can 
scratch — and get drunk, if there's any bad vodka 
around. 

"Well, they sent me to Port Arthur, and there 
I stayed from April to the end of the siege. I 



THE EXILED STUDENT 251 

intended to surrender as soon as I could get near 
the enemy, but I never had the chance. My 
trenches were never near the outposts ; and I think 
my men suspected me. Two others got across and 
surrendered; but no such luck for me. I had to 
endure all those horrors and discomforts. Ugh! 
the smells in those trenches ! the corpse smell in the 
air, everywhere, all the time ! And the hospitals ! I 
had to go to look up my wounded men, in decency's 
name. I wish I could forget it all. It sickens me 
now, whenever I think of the hospitals beside our 
barracks. And the noise! I believe that was 
worst of all. The roar of those Japanese shells! 
Ach GottI It was like the end of the world. A 
thousand thunderclaps in one. Night and day, 
it was one hang-hang and roar-r-r! It took one 
of these Japanese shells to make the stone-deaf 
to hear. And then! Go up on the highest forts 
and look, and you couldn't see the first sign of a 
Japanese or his outworks. Not a gun, nor an em- 
bankment, not a trench, nor a line of earth, nor a 
sand-bag in sight. The pigmies would come up 
out of the ground to attack, and come on until 
they could push grenades in the mouths of our big 
guns in the casements. In all the world, there was 
never anything like it. It was uncanny. Nothing 
in sight, only shells shooting over from the hills 
and dropping down out of the sky. No fort, no 
gun, no gunner anywhere in sight. Somewhere on 



252 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

a hill-top, there was a little gnome in a pit, with a 
telephone wire, telling his gunners to fire higher or 
lower, so many degrees to east or west. It gave 
me the creeps. 

"I did not admire the Russian commanders, — 
except Kondrachenko. He was a man. I would 
much rather have been with that old hero, Nogi, 
fighting on the Japanese side. And then, one day, 
Stoessel handed us over. Not a word did we have 
to say, any more than my Siberians had had to 
say as to whether they would like to be soldiers or 
not. I had full mufti always ready at Port 
Arthur, and I burned my uniform, all my peacock- 
coloured clothes. 

"We live in a temple now. Queer notion ! I 
should think they would consider it a desecration 
to have Russians in the house of Buddha. Prob- 
ably they will burn them down, purify by fire, 
when we are gone ! When we are gone ! Yes, I 
wish I knew when this stage would be over in my 
career. 

"Here I am in Japan ! herded in with a lot of 
men I despise, with not as much liberty as I had 
in my Siberian town. And when the war ends, I 
suppose I will be counted off like cargo again, and 
shipped back where I came from. There's no use 
in trying to do anything here. It's only when 
they ship us to Europe, that I can get away. All 
my efforts now are towards holding my tongue. 



THE EXILED STUDENT 25S 

I have asked to have a teacher of Japanese, but we 
are so crowded at Shin-so- ji that there is no room 
for a teacher unless he shoves some Buddha off his 
pedestal in the graveyard." 

Vladimir's surprise was as great as my own, 
but he disliked the cold-blooded, calculating dis- 
loyalty of the young exile. "He is not a loyal 
Russian," said Vladimir severely, and at that I 
laughed. "How could he be? I don't beheve I am 
one myself any more either." 

Since the chief-surgeon left, the whole atmos- 
phere has changed, and we chafe under many 
petty annoyances. Suddenly, there came an order 
to remove the cots, the wooden beds, from the 
wards — from all but the officers' wards. Many of 
the sick ones cried and protested, and all the 
nurses have been changed around to other wards, 
too, to the great sorrow and real injury of their 
patients. Nesan came from her new ward, to see 
if I would not explain to her sick Cossacks what 
was to be done, and quiet them a little. 

"If you will tell me why it is done, I will come," 
I said. Nesan was embarrassed and plainly un- 
happy. "Oh! Okasama, it is the work of these 
small new officers in the chancery. They say 
Japanese soldiers lie on the floor, and so Russian 
soldiers must lie on the floor. But it is not so at 
Zentsuji. There every Japanese soldier, hundreds, 
thousands, all have wooden beds, like the Cossacks 



S54 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

had yesterday. And so it is at Hiroshima, too. 
They are taking the beds up the hill to the Shiro, 
and Japanese soldiers are carrying." 

And truly a procession of recruits were toiling 
up to the chateau with the hundreds of high cots, 
and hundreds of our sick men are crying and 
whimpering like children to-night. It is only a 
little piece of stupidity and assertiveness on the 
part of some petty official, but it is as unkind as it 
is senseless — a mere parade of authority. It is the 
old story of the parvenu in power, the upstart 
in control, the beggar on horseback, that we have 
evidence enough of in Russia. Our zemstvos and 
any estate owners, who try to do good for the vil- 
lagers and peasants, constantly meet this same 
spirit. 

The new surgeon is very eminent and skilful, 
they say. He speaks German, of course, for the 
Japanese believe medical science was evolved and 
can only be taught in Germany. But he is not 
the same as our old chief -surgeon, that preux 
chevalier, that fine flower of Bushido, 

"Yes, he and General Nogi. I put them in the 
first rank, with any officer and gentleman in 
Europe. These others ? No ! There is not a real, 
a true gentleman, as Europe understands the 
word, among them. Only Nogi and Kikuchi to 
redeem these forty millions," is the way the cap- 
tive officers talk. They are bitter against all in 



THE EXILED STUDENT 255 

command in Matsuyama; and since the sword 
incident, there have been other regrettable affairs. 
Blows have been exchanged, and the Prussian 
martinet of a commandant has even struck un- 
armed captives, defenceless prisoners, with his 
sword. 



CHAPTER XXX 

THE NIGHT LODGERS 

Saturday, February 4th. 
/^N visitors' day I went to Sandy's quarters, 
^-^ and I must own that he has a depressing 
milieu at Shin-so- ji. The forty officers are crowded 
together in the temple, and their exercise ground, 
the graveyard, is more closely crowded with 
grey stone monuments, tablets, and lanterns. The 
ranking engineer officers from Port Arthur are 
stowed like steerage passengers in the upper part 
of the temple library. They try to make merry 
over it, those six big Russians, who sleep and live 
where one thin shadow of a priest used to read and 
meditate. Sandy and the younger officers have 
bunks in the anteroom, and their interpreter is the 
worst I have yet encountered. Taciturn and sus- 
picious, and woodenly stupid, he watches them all 
the time, as if espionage and not translation were 
his duty. He peers over their shoulders to see 
what they read and write, noses in to see what they 
are doing, and has his ears pricked-up listening 
to all they say. And how they loathe him! And 

256 



THE NIGHT LODGERS 257 

how they long to wring his long, thin neck, and 
to beat him with their fists ! If they only dared ! 

The gloomy interpreter stuck to my elbow, 
while Sandy showed me his quarters— his own bed 
in a big closet in the wall — and, when the officers 
in the cabinet-de-luxe gave me a chair and they 
sat on their rolled-up mattresses, M. Flnterprete 
stood near the door and craned his neck. The 
wrath of my hosts was at boiling point, and I spent 
my time assuaging them, in German. "At least," 
I said, "the war will soon be over. With Port 
Arthur gone, Manchuria is nothing to us any 
more; and after the next big battle, whether we 
lose or win, there will be peace. The other nations 
of Europe are getting frightened lest they be 
drawn in ; and the bankers, who rule the world, 
are opposed to continuing this disturbance of the 
Bourses. Be patient !" 

"Bah ! Peace now ? No ! A thousand times, 
no. I would rather stay here, in this little box, 
four years, ten years, rather die here, than have 
the war end now. There can be no end of the war, 
until we recover Port Arthur and wipe out the 
stain of Stoessel's surrender. This is only a colo- 
nial war. Russia itself is not affected. We fought 
a forty-seven 3'^ears' war in the Caucasus. We can 
fight a longer war in Manchuria. No. No peace 
until there are Russian victories, I would rather 
stay here forever, than go free, than live — with 



258 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Russia a vanquished power. Vanquished by these 
Japanese ! beaten by an army of those !" pointing 
to a bow-legged old soldier, in patched and faded 
khaki clothes, standing at the gate. 

Until last week forty more officers slept on the 
floor of the temple and a dozen or more slept on 
the broad shelves at the sides, where the images 
of the five hundred Rakans used to stand. Those 
in the library used to jeer down to the officers in 
Na Dnie, or Le Font, as they called it, after 
Gorky's sketch of the vagabonds' night lodgings 
in Moscow. 

Esper came before I got away, and Madame 
P also arrived. She can come to see her hus- 
band here on the regular two days of the week 
when general visitors are allowed, and visit him 
in the chancery, or out in the graveyard. On 
sunny days, they put the samovar on the tomb- 
stones and have al fresco tea. Once a week, the 
captive may spend four hours with his family. 
Soon they will let him leave the temple and live with 
his family entirely. She is a Lutheran from the 
Baltic provinces, so naturally enjoys the good 
will of the Japanese. 

An officer at Esper's temple collared the 
interpreter, cuffed his ears, and gave him the good 
shaking he probably deserved; but, for striking 
an official, the young hot-head is imprisoned for 
three weeks. 



THE NIGHT LODGERS 259 

"The French prisoners in Wiirtemburg were 
shot for that very thing in 1870," I said, "and 
they were forced to work on fortifications all along 
the German frontier, as you know. They slept 
on the ground in tents, in rain and snow; they 
were herded in dark, damp casemates of the 
fortress at Ulm; and the French soldiers died in 
droves everywhere they were kept in Germany, 
because of their unsanitary surroundings, and for 
want of proper, of sufficient food and clothing. 
Germans themselves, and all Europe had to 
organise relief work to save them. Now the Japa- 
nese, you must admit, by contrast with what hap- 
pened in 1870, are not as inhuman, as uncivilised, 
as unchristian as the people of your friend, the 
Kaiser, are they? You are well off. You are 
lapped in luxury, by comparison ; so, give the 
devil his due, Esper." 

"Yes, I can give the devil his due all right, but 
I cannot give anything to the Japanese. Don't 
ask me to try. You are not a loyal Russian to 
defend the enemy. No Russian ought to think and 
reason as you do. For Russia, right or wrong 1 
is our watchword. And Holy Russia is always 
right, against pagans, heathens, Buddhists, and 
idolaters. " 

"Andrew Y knows a chateau in France, 

where one of the eoc-votos in the chapel is a piece 
of the black bread — ^half straw too— that the 



^60 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

father of the chatelaine had served to him for 
months in the fortress of Magdeburg in 1870. 
Now, you have good bread here, do you not?" I 
asked. 

"Yes, better than we had at Mukden." 

*'Well, then, the Japanese feed you better in 
this httle faraway provincial town of Matsuyama, 
than the Prussians could or would feed the old 

Comte de in that large city of Germany. And 

they do this when The Hague ordains that you 
should be treated, as regards food, quarters, and 
clothing, precisely on the same footing as the 
troops of the government which captured you. 
You should be living on fish and rice, pickled plums 
and daikon, by the convention of The Hague, 
should you not ? You have good white bread — 
made from the most expensive American flour, the 
missionaries tell me — soup, meat, vegetables, tea. 
You have clean, hot food three times a day ; you 
have a clean bed, abundant covering and clothing, 
hot baths, more fresh air than you want, and a 
chance to walk in a narrow graveyard at any 
time, haven't you.^ And so has every Cossack here, 
hasn't he.f"' 

"Yes, truly." 

"Then the Japanese are kinder to their pris- 
oners than the Germans .P" 

"Yes," he said slowly, while his colleagues roared 
with laughter at his discomfiture. "But then, you 



THE NIGHT LODGERS S61 

see, thej have to. The conventions of Geneva and 
The Hague made sure that prisoners of war should 
never again be neglected and so shamefully treated 
as the French were in 1870. They wouldn't dare 
not feed and keep us well." 

"But, Esper, it was after Geneva that SkobelefF 
took Plevna. What happened to the Turkish 
prisoners there .^ Did you ever hear.?" 

"Ah! Bah! Yes. But Port Arthur was not 
Plevna." 

"No. Fortunately so. You were not all driven 
out into the open, snowy field and herded there 
three days and nights without food or shelter, nor 
kept in tents on scant rations for another week 
after the surrender, were you.''" 

"Good Lord, no !" 

"The Japanese have not forced the prisoners 
to labour on new fortifications under the guns of 
the fortress, have they ?" 

"Not here in Matsuyama." 

"No, nor elsewhere. Now you have virtually 
admitted that in these things the Japanese are 
more humane, more civilised, more enlightened, 
more Christian than the Germans, have you not.?" 

"Ah-h! No! No! Not yet. Have mercy! 
Madame !" 

"And you admit that they observe the Geneva 
convention better than the Russians did at Plevna, 
do you not.?" 



262 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

"Ah! Ah! I cannot, I will not say 'Yes,' to 
that. You are all wrong in the way you approach 
your argument. I suppose I could love my jailers 
in time — love the sentries even, if they were not 
all bow-legged. Love the interpreter even, if he 
had thin lips, and round eyes set straight in his 
face. Until then, no, never." 



CHAPTER XXXI 
THE DULL ROUTINE 

Sunday, February 5th. 

I ASKED one Port Arthur officer what was the 
best thing he had seen during the war, the 
thing that impressed him most with the goodness 
of the world and the human race in it. He said : 
"The absence of the Japanese flag at Port Arthur. 
We never saw it, after the surrender, until we got 
down to Dalny. The Russian flag came down 
and the flagstaff's and buildings were left bare. 
We lived on in our same houses, waited on by our 
same servants, and the men remained in their bar- 
racks, until time to march to the Dalny train. 
Some one rowed over in the night and hung black 
streamers on the Pobieda's [Victory's] wreck. 
Poor Pobieda! Pobieda! What a name of irony! 
It was General Nogi's special order that no flag 
should be raised until Stoessel had left Port 
Arthur. There was much of Bushido with Nogi 
at Port Arthur. It is a pity we meet so httle in 
Matsuyama." 

Tears came to my eyes to think of such nobihty 
of feeling, such chivalry, such considerate regard 

263 



264 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

for a foe. Rare old Nogi ! best exponent of 
Bushido. I cannot imagine Stoessel doing this, 
had the situations been reversed — nor Kuro- 
patkin. 

We have news lately of riots in Russia, and 
turmoil in many provinces. We are sorely puzzled 
as to how much truth is in it; how much more 
serious the usual winter disturbances are this year 
than in other years. Everything is exaggerated 
by enemies of Russia at this time, and the rest of 
the world does not know, and never interested itself 
to know before, that there are always strikes and 
small disturbances in every city, when the peasants 
have come in from the country to work in the 
factories during the winter. All this we owe to 
De Witte and his blessed industrialism that was to 
change and regenerate Russia. This affair of 
January SSd in Petersburg, however, seems to be 
a little out of the usual, and we are all much con- 
cerned. That outcast, that degenerate, that 
Maxim Gorky, seems to have been at the bottom of 
it; and, in common with all decent Russians, I 
wish we might have an end of him and his ravings, 
his studies of the lowest life of our cities. All 
countries and capitals have their slums, but why 
exploit them.? and why do outsiders read such 
things and always talk about them, as if they were 
the typical, usual life of all classes of the whole 
empire.? As if we all slept under old boats on the 



THE DULL ROUTINE 265 

banks of the Volga! or slept in penny-a-night 
lodging houses! Bah! We read that Gorky is 
allowed thirty-four Japanese sens a day for his 
food in prison, and that he, a consumptive, is 
kept without fire. The newspapers hold this up as 
an example of how Russians are treated in Russian 
prisons, and draw contrasts with the situation here 
in Japan. I would not admit that this about 
Gorky's prison fare might be true, to the Ameri- 
cans who had asked me about it. I told them that 
it was probably a canard from some English news- 
paper, and that all Americans were mad about 
Russian prisons anyhow. He said that Americans 
only believed what Russians themselves wrote 
about Russian prisons. Was it a true picture of 
the prisons in Tolstoi's "Resurrection" .^^ Bah! 
We one and all cursed Tolstoi, but we could not 
say anything more. The French Consul says that 
last winter a dramatisation of "Resurrection" was 
produced at a Tokyo theatre, and announced as: 
"A Study of Russian Social Life and Customs" ! 
Heaven forbid ! Think of that ! Think what 
Russia suffers in misrepresentation by her own 
writers. It really seems to be a conspiracy of all 
the world to misrepresent us, to put us wrong and 
show our exceptional worst as the typical average. 
It is useless to argue. I give it up. At times my 
allegiance weakens terribly, and I suppose for all 
the rest of our lives we must go on excusing and 



^66 AS THE HAGUE OHDAINS 

explaining and trying to put our half-civilised, 
our quarter-civilised country in better light. 

At last our army at Mukden has begun to move. 
Two great armies, a half-million men, have been 
lying in trenches and caves ever since Kuropatkin's 
fiasco on the Shaho in October. The sentries have 
talked together, and the men in the trenches have 
shouted across, and none of us can understand this 
long inaction, this armistice. The Japanese have 
naturally preferred to crouch over their hibacJiis 
in the underground trenches ; but cold is nothing 
to Russians, and our real campaign was to open 
in December. What is Kuropatkin doing? 
Mistchenko's raid down the Liao River to New- 
chwang did not accomplish anything, and did not 
cover a movement from Mukden, as we had 
thought. Mistchenko only took a long, cold ride, 
and got a bullet in his leg, for his trouble. 
Another failure. And Cossack is now a name of 
derision to all the world. 

The American pope said the other day that the 
greatest surprise to the world in this war, had been 
the harmlessness of the Cossacks ; that they were 
now an exploded myth, an outlived delusion, a ter- 
rible bogy forever laid at rest ; that everybody's 
teeth used to chatter when we said : "Cossack !" but 
that now the Cossacks seemed only good for whip- 
ping unarmed women and students, and shooting 
priests. A rather strong indictment, but true. I 



THE DULL ROUTINE £67 

am afraid all Russia is coming to be an exploded 
myth — a bubble pricked — a decadent empire ruled 
by a race of degenerates. 

All the white-robed, red-crossed company at 
the hospital have renewed their vituperations of 
Stoessel. Why, think you? 

Some days ago ninety barrels of pickled cab- 
bage arrived from Port Arthur. A spoil of war 
that will help feed this army of no occupation now 
idling in Japan. That everlasting Japanese pre- 
arrangement had no part in providing this 
cabbage. Stoessel did that. The high-smelling 
pickle offended the Japanese, who can endure their 

own daikon; and they asked Andrew Y to see 

if it was fit to eat, or if it should not be destroyed. 
"Excellent! Excellent!" said Andrew. "The^ 
men will be happy to have it every day, and the 
officers may like it once or twice a week !" But 
some pushed it from them with fury, and because 
of this captured cabbage flayed poor Stoessel alive 
again on a new count. 

"What ! I surrender with ninety barrels of this 
cabbage in the cellar ? Never !" thundered Griev- 
sky. He figured it out, knowing the precise Japa- 
nese ways of ratio and apportionment, how many 
hundreds of barrels there must have been in the 
storehouses of the surrendered fortress, if ninety 
barrels came to Matsuyama. "Surely, four hun- 
dred and fifty barrels must have gone to Nagoya, 



^68 AS THE HAGUE OHDAINS 

and nine hundred barrels to the Hamadera camp ! 
Oh ! the black villainy of that Stoessel ! It 
grows worse and worse ! Kusai! Kusai! [It 
smells ! It smells !] the Japanese can truly 
say." 



CHAPTER XXXII 
THE FINDING OF TOSABURO 

Monday, February 6th. 

LAST night was the full moon night, the fif- 
teenth night of the Chinese, or lunar year. 
Madame Takasu sent me word in the morning that 
the Jiu-Roku-Zakura, the Sixteenth-Day-Cherry- 
Tree, the tree with a soul, was actually blooming 
now in the dead of winter. As all lyo will flock 
to see it — no, to worship it — for the next fortnight, 
we went early. As first-nighters, we assisted at 
this annual 'premiere of the old tree with a very 
charming company of poets and aristocrats, the 
same charming circle encountered at the chateau 
the night of the moon-viewing, in September. It 
is strange enough, at this season — in the dead of 
winter, when only camellias can stand the cold 
nights, and my beautiful hedge shows many a 
browned blossom every morning, and hardy plum 
trees are only beginning to bud — it is strange to 
think of a cherry tree blooming. It is plainly 
supernatural. 

It is stranger yet to see that picturesque green 

269 



270 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

glen of the lonely temple now alive with sentries 
and idling, strolling prisoners of war ; for even 
the Cherry Tree Temple has been taken for a depot 
for horios — a forlorn, melancholy lot of soldiers 
from Port Arthur. It was not in harmony with 
the poetry of flower-worshipping to come upon 
these shaggy Cossacks and sailors, and shabby 
men of all arms and kinds. I looked at them criti- 
cally too, they v/ere so different from the suffering 
men in white kimonos at the hospital. And what a 
lot of criminals, cutthroats, and ragamuffins they 
looked to be! Not a comely, a joyous, or a smil- 
ing countenance there. I appreciate now the con- 
ventional Japanese smile when the heart is break- 
ing, the smile when suffering intense pain, the 
smile when telling sad news. It is better than the 
gloomy Russian countenances we meet. 

The officer in command came from the guard- 
house, bowed profoundly to Madame Takasu, and 
offered to go with us. They had been a little in 
doubt, he said, whether to close the temple court 
to visitors, or to shut the prisoners inside during 
the blossom time. They finally concluded that 
either would be undeserved punishment. It is old 
custom in lyo to make a pilgrimage to this tree, 
which first bloomed on the sixteenth day of the 
year in answer to a son's prayer that his dying 
father might once more see the sakura no hana 
(cherry blossoms). The dying man's soul entered 



THE FINDING OF TOSABURO £71 

into the tree, and the Jiu-Roku-Zakura is as 
famous as any of the classic Chinese "Twenty-six 
Examples of Fihal Piety." The people wish to 
see it in war-time more than ever, and are admitted 
to worship the budding branches; to clap their 
hands and say a prayer ; to look over the parapet 
at the beautiful view; and to look their fill at 
the uncouth horios — peasants from a Christian 
country, who have no such refinements of Hfe and 
thought, nothing so elevated in country-side cus- 
toms as this divine flower-worshipping. 

It was cool and fresh in the little valley, and 
when we had wound up the long path, and climbed 
the outer terrace steps, there stood the many- 
branched tree, ail dotted over with brown buds 
bursting to show pink petals, while a few full 
flowers turned pale faces to the chilly sunshine. 
"How white it is !" I exclaimed. "Why, the cherry 
blossoms in Tokyo used to be rose-pink; as pink 
as my tsubakis."" The lieutenant watched us nar- 
rowly, and Madame Takasu said very gravely: 
"It is because of the war. So much blood has been 
shed in Manchuria that even the cherry flowers 
are pale, without colour, this year." 

I caught my breath; the tears came. Oh! 
these exquisite people ! What other race or nation 
has soul and sentiment to such degree as to feel 
that even the flowers are blanched at the torrents 
of blood that have flowed in Manchuria! What 



^n AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

a thought! How Japanese! Ah! that Lafcadio 
Hearn were living ! 

"How did you learn our Japanese language?" 
asked the lieutenant, and I gave him the name of 
mj teachers in Matsuyama. 

"But it is very difficult, our language. Had you 
never studied Japanese language before?" he per- 
sisted. 

"Oh, yes, a little. Once before, a long time ago, 
I had been in Tokyo." 

"Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! was it at the Russian Koshikan 
[legation] ? You must be my friend the miya sama 
[the princess] Sophia I I knew you. I knew you ! 
It was long ago, when I was a little boy ; but I 
remember. Oh, yes ! I remember, and I still have 
all those beautiful eggs. I cried many, many days, 
when you went away without me. I wanted to go, 
as Saigo's son had gone with Russian Minister's 
children to Russia, but ^^^ou would not take me. 
And now — Oh ! it is very wonderful ! very wonder- 
ful!" and the little man began to open his card- 
case. 

"But who are you?" I asked in surprise at this 
link in my past life reappearing, for his card in 
Japanese text told me nothing. 

"Oh! you would not know me by that. I have 
new name now. I used to be Tosaburo, Higuchi's 
son, Tosaburo. Then I was only third son ; now 
I am adopted son. I am Kato san; a lieutenant 



THE FINDING OF TOSABURO ^73 

since the war has begun. Oh ! I am so grieving, 
because they will not send me to war in Man- 
churia." 

"Lieutenant Kato! My little Tosaburo! 
Impossible! Oh! Molodetz! MolodetzT I 
cried. 

"Yes. That is what you used to call me. And 
do you remember nice sakura [cherry] and momiji 
[maple] parties in Fukiage gardens with my 
mother.? Well, she is gone, now; and Fukiage is 
not for the Kuges any more. It is Emperor's own 
garden now. No one can go there at all, to see 
the flowers in spring ; only to Enriokwan ; and that 
palace is pulled down. Oh! Tokyo is so changed 
since I was a boy." 

"But Kato.? Kato.? You must be the daimio of 
lyo now." 

"No, no! Those are not my ancestors at 
Dairinji. My new family was not of Kato 
Kiyomasa, who went to Korea. Oh ! No ! There 
are many Katos in Japan. It is common name, 
like Ito, and Inouye, and Watanabe; and I am 
just one of those many Katos. There have been 
Hisamatsus, Matsudairas, and Hanabusas here 
as daimios, since the Katos. But your miya sama, 
your Icnias sama, where is he .? Oh ! Oh ! a thousand 
pardons. I had forgotten all that at the Hibiya. 
I am so stupid — so sorry — so sorry. Please for- 
give. I am just like an Aino, you see, mlya sama. 



274 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

I have lost all my civilised manners. Oh ! Forgive 



me. 



I told him my new name, and that I had also 
been adopted; that a Russian Colonel, bandaged 
fast to his cot at the barracks hospital, had adopted 
me. His eyes opened full at that. And then he 
laughed, went off in a storm of glee, at the idea of 
my being adopted too, and having a new name. The 
years rolled away for a minute, and I played again 
and made j okes for my j oily little Tokyo neighbour. 
We had the jolly joke over again of my adopting 
him, and taking him back to Russia to grow up 
as my own knias sama, because there were two 
brothers older than he, and he really "was not 
needed in Japan,^' as he used to argue. And now, 
what a situation it would be if he were a Russian 
knias sama! — and at war with Russia! Or with 
Japan? Oh! No! No! quite impossible, that. 

The prisoners had slipped the paper doors, 
crowded out into the court, and surrounded us in 
a silent, staring circle, ten deep. Little Madame 
Takasu drew closer to me, as these heavy, stupid 
faces made a wall around us. "Oh ! I am so 
afraid," she said, with an appealing smile — that 
wonderful Japanese smile of good manners, tri- 
umphant over all personal feeling. The prisoners 
looked as savage and ferocious, as untamed and 
uncombed as any barbarians one could ever meet. 
Pity stirred within me for the poor, idle, densely- 



THE FINDING OF TOSABURO ^75 

ignorant, dumb creatures, driven to the army and 
war, as cattle are driven to pasture or abattoir, 
but no pulse of pride stirred at contemplation of 
them as my own nationals, as fellow-countrymen, 
as Russians. They were a frowsy lot, in disor- 
derly uniforms, and every race-type was repre- 
sented there, from the Laplander and Finn, and 
the flat-faced, broken-nosed men of the Volga, to 
the clear-cut faces of the Caucasians and Buriat 
Mongols. Men of every religion — Jews, Catholics, 
Lutherans, Armenians, Old Faith, Stundist, 
Orthodox, Mohammedan — were in that stolid, 
gaping mass that surrounded us, and whose odour 
was strong, peculiar, and distinct, as if they were 
horses or goats. 

'•^ Speak to them P' said the little lieutenant, and 
when I uttered a few words in Russian there was 
a show of life in the dull faces. "A Barina! A 
Barinar they repeated with stupefaction, and 
looked helplessly to a petty officer from the ships, 
who was their spokesman. Translating for my 
companions, I learned that they longed for some- 
thing to do — some work to occupy, some musical 
instruments to help cheer the long days of noth- 
ingness. And then they naively asked about the 
tree. "Oh, so many Japonski have been here lately, 
and they all look and look at this one tree and 
talk about it. And yesterday, Barina, some old 
men with white beards came here, and they wrote 



^76 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

all those notices you see hanging there, and tied 
them up and went away. I suppose they are going 
to chop down that tree, or sell this place, and then 
where will they send us?" 

When I interpreted the Cossacks' idea about 
the poem papers, Tosaburo laughed amazedly at 
such ignorance of poetic custom. Poor Tosaburo 
was chagrined that he could not accompany two 
such distinguished visitors back to the city, but he 
was. on duty, hard and fast, for three daj^s. 

"Yes, I am very honoured for one so young, of 
cadet school, for I command three military posts, 
you see ; or, I am the bonze san of three temples. 
Just as you like. But my first day, I shall come 
to see the hnias sama,'* 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

A LITTLE VICTORY 

Friday, February 17th. 

THERE were sounds of a gogai in faraway 
streets as I left the house this morning ; but 
I had not a chance to ask the news, until I met the 
surliest of all the interpreters at the operating- 
room door. To my query he answered: "It is 
death of very bad man, your Grand Duke 
Sergius." 

"No one in the world could agree with you better 
than I on that question," I told the astonished 
boor. He dropped his lower jaw, and the heavy 
rice-mouth with its big white teeth gaped wide 
open. Foiled of his purpose of insult, he moved 
off sullenly; and later, the American sister of 
charity, who was on duty, told me of the bomb- 
throwing within the Kremlin square. She thought 
it might be well not to mention it in the wards, 
although no order had been given; but I assured 
her that it would not be a cause of sadness and 
depression to any there; that in fact they would 
more likely rejoice and cheer up. 

But the poor Grand Duchess, whom We all so 

277 



278 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

admire! All the prisoners have enjoyed her 
bounty from the first. Only a few weeks ago, a 

large sum came to Andrew Y , whom she 

deputed to act as her almoner ; and his friends had 
their pleasure in making him explain every time 
that it was not Serge Alexandrovitch, but Eliza- 
beth of Hesse, whose kindness was extended to 
them. 

It would not do to record the treasonable senti- 
ments expressed on receipt of this news, and there 
was sorrow for the Grand Duchess only that it 
was accomplished in such a shocking way. "Now 
my Cossacks may get their overcoats and shoes," 
said one officer tersely. "No more bales of 
Cossacks' great-coats will be sold at the Sunday 
morning Thieves' Market at Moscow." Their 
tongues once loosened, my patients talked so freely 
that I felt as if in a Geneva Nihilist assembly. 
It is amazing what advanced and liberal senti- 
ments they dare voice, dare continually and openly 
discuss here in this freedom! And what contra- 
diction ! Freedom in prison ! Freedom of speech 
in a pagan, Asiatic country, but not in our own 
Christian country ! There is no censorship of 
what we read here, save as the censor cuts out 
notes of military affairs in the Kobe paper ; and, 
what the censor cuts out for Dairinji, the censor 
at Oguri leaves untouched. The revolutionary 
emissary, brought from Port Arthur, so wearied 



A LITTLE VICTORY 279 

his fellow captives with his philippics that they 
begged the Japanese to take him away. He and 
his big Baden-Powell hat have disappeared from 
Matsuyama, and he is now frothing his anarchist 
doctrines to a new audience. 

All the books forbidden us in Russia are freely 
read and lent around here. There is liberty of 
mind at least in these paper and bamboo prisons. 
Many are seriously reading and discussing re- 
publican forms of government and representative 
assemblies. The Oxford Professor Bryce's book on 
the American Commonwealth is often brought me 
by those who want me to argue its English into 
clearer Russian. Vladimir and the old Colonel say 
that all this seething of liberal ideas, all this talk of 
constitutions and parliaments is like the times in 
the last months of Alexander the Liberator's life. 
The old Colonel wept the other day when he told 
how near Russia once was to attaining liberal rule 
and political enlightenment. "To think how the 
Constitution of Loris Melikoff was laboured over 
until that last midnight, when Loris Melikoff 
came home and said the greatest work of the cen- 
tury was accomplished — a greater work than the 
liberation of the serfs. The next day it was 
signed, and Alexander Nicholaivitch rose, rej oiced, 
and went for a drive, pondering on his ukase of 
the next day declaring this new Constitution. I 
saw it with my own eyes, I held it in my own hands. 



280 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

I read it, I read it. I know it yet, every word," 
said the old officer excitedly. "And then — one 
bomb — one second — and Russia was hurled back 
to all this twenty-odd years of stagnation, of 
arrested development, of retrogression under 
PobedonostsefF's rule. Reaction, oppression, per- 
secution, and darkest ignorance are the story of 
the years. Eighteen roubles spent on the army to 
ea-ch rouble spent on the schools ! Millions of 
people living like dumb cattle, unable to read or 
to write ! And this going on generation after 
generation when many of us are willing, but, yes, 
are actually prevented, forbidden, punished, for 
trying to teach the peasants. Children are ex-, 
eluded from the schools because of their race or 
religion, and zemstvo schools are hindered or 
closed. There seems to be no hope, no help for 
Russia. Von Plehve and Serge have gone to their 
account, but that archangel of evil, old Pobedo- 
nostieff, lives." 

Beside all our regular social distinctions and 
classes, our order of rank and titles, there is a 
subtle line drawn here in Matsuyama that cuts 
through all the prisoner company of officers. It 
is as near to hearing Monnet-Sully as we can come 
when Grievsky, in some of his long tirades, beats 
his breast and says: "TF^ who were captured in 
action, and those surrendered ones from Port 
Arthur !" And then, among the surrendered ones 



A LITTLE VICTORY 281 

there is a line drawn between the mihtary and 
naval officers. Von W^oerfFel tries to be a peace- 
maker and go-between of all kinds; for, although 
of the navy, he was not of the Port Arthur fleet. 
At his suggestion I have been to visit the temples, 
where the naval officers are quartered. Dairinji, 
near the railway station, has the largest company 
of fleet officers, and they gave me tea and good 
music. 

They are very sure that the Japanese threat of 
raising the Russian ships in Port Arthur is an idle 
boast. Each set of ship's officers made thorough 
work of destroying the vessels, when the loss 
of Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre Hill left the 
ships so many plain targets for Japanese gunners. 
They exploded dynamite inside, and fired mines 
and torpedoes from the outside, and none of the 
Russian battleships and cruisers will ever be raised 
and dragged over to Japan like captives in a 
Roman triumphal procession. To be saved that 
humiliation is something. All speak aff'ection- 
ately, even tearfulty, of their lost ships. All have 
pictures of their ships in gala array, and as con- 
trasts, pictures of those same ships sunk to their 
funnels and tilted at every angle as they lie with 
decks awash, resting on the bottom of Port Arthur 
harbour. As Von Woerfl*el says, there cannot be 
much room left for the fishes now, it is so crowded 
with battleships, cruisers, gunboats, torpedo- 



282 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

boats, and dozens and dozens of launches and small 
boats, beside the wreckage of the Japanese block- 
ing expeditions. The harbour is also paved with 
guns, rifles, revolvers, swords, and ammunition 
that were thrown there the night Stoessel signed 
the infamous surrender. The officers led and the 
men followed, until it was like the throwing of 
carnival confetti. 

They are a very gloomy and depressed com- 
pany, these sailors ashore. Their bandsmen, 
many of whom are now acting as officers' servants, 
weep for their abandoned musical instruments. It 
was unnecessary cruelty to thus deprive these poor 
musicians of their very breath of life and a part 
of their being, by obliging them to leave their in- 
sti'uments behind. The officers, too, are sad 
without the consolation and distraction of music, 
and the French Consul is overwhelmed with re- 
quests for musical instruments. He spent much 
of the Queen of Greece's contribution in buying a 
piano for each "Prisoners' Base," for each etape, 
and piles of sheet music besides. The officers at 
Myoenji had more photographs than any of the 
others — innumerable views of the wounded battle- 
ships and cruisers, with their decks slanting to the 
tide. And the poor Pobiedal riddled from with- 
out, wrecked from within, the machinery a tangle 
of rusted rubbish, leaning to the Pallada — the 
broken dream of Russia's sea power. 



A LITTLE VICTORY 283 

Mikhail's cousin had pictures of his own fat- 
funnelled torpedo-boat, the , which was 

captured from the Chinese at Taku forts five years 
ago ; and in which he had several times raced over 
to Chefoo by night and back again. "The Japa- 
nese tried to get my torpedo-boat at the Boxer 
time, and they thought they would get it again; 
but I settled all that when ordered ashore. They 
can Hft her, but she will be an iron box with the 
bottom dropped out." 

fvly <> <:> 'Qy 

Sunday, February 19th. 
We have many new cases in hospital now 
from this last fiasco of Gripenberg's — an advance 
straight at the Japanese front w^hich carried him 
to Sandepu and Heikoutai. It was all hard fighting 
for three days in a blinding snowstorm ; and then, 
as Kuropatkin did not send up reinforcements, 
Gripenberg had to march back again, passing his 
wounded, who had frozen to death where they fell, 
with no effort from the great army to even succour 
them. The jet-black, frosted feet and hands, that 
are brought here now, wring one's heart in pity. 
What wasted effort ! What a senseless sacrifice of 
human beings! "The King of France with 
a hundred thousand men marched up the hill and 
then marched down again." An heroic march, a 



284 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

little victory; and then, defeat, retreat — and 
many prisoners brought to Japan. 

How weary I am of this continued story of 
hesitation, incompetency, bickerings, and defeat! 

The whole army blames Kuropatkin for his 
failure to follow Gripenberg's advance, and for 
his turning the Sandepu victory into the Heikoutai 
defeat. Nothing that Bertha von Suttner de- 
scribes equals the horrors of this Heikoutai — this 
battle in a blizzard — when the surgeons' hands 
were frosted as they worked; when flesh and in- 
struments froze as they touched together; and 
severed arteries were stanched without dressings. 
Ah ! Truly ! Lay down your arms ! Lay down 
your arms ! 

Vladimir dwells now on the fact that the one 
success, the one advance of the whole war, was 
made by a general of German descent and tra- 
ditions, one of the non-Russian officers to whom 
Alexander Nicholaivitch gave the important 
places, and whose superior intelligence, character, 
and ability even Alexander Alexandrovitch had to 
admit. No other Russian general has done any- 
thing but disgrace himself so far. No new stars 
have risen, no geniuses come forward, no great 
reputations have been made. In fact, reputations 
have been unmade; and Kuropatkin retains credit 
now only for his social qualities, his literary 
abilities, his French puns. The Poles have won 



A LITTLE VICTOKY g85 

all the honours so far. The best engineers, gun- 
ners, and surgeons were Poles, and one Polish 
officer on a torpedo-boat did things as recklessly 
brave as the Japanese away back in last March. 

-^c^ •<;:> 'N^ <::>• 

Sunday, March 12th. 

Tosaburo made his ceremonial call on Vladimir, 
and the handsome chap made the most complete 
conquest of my danna san. Even Grievsky ad- 
mitted that he was a true hushi, an ideal Japanese, 
the most charmingly polished and refined jailer he 
had ever met. I had such a pride in my protege 
that both Vladimir and Lyov poked fun at me. 
His presence made a flutter in the chancery, too. 
Half the bureau escorted him to our ward, and 
even the surliest cub of an interpreter put on 
good manners for the occasion, and wanted to stay 
and interpret. Tosaburo waved him off, in the 
magnificent way these long-descended aristocrats 
have, and said briefly to the soshi, "No! No! 
The miya sama can interpret for all languages," 
and the interpreter, looking bewilderedly around, 
finally brought his gaze to me and stood stock-still, 
frankly open-mouthed with astonishment. His 
brain was working over those words, miya samay 
and their application to me, when Tosaburo, 
having clicked his heels together and made a 
military salute to Vladimir, and then a nice Eng- 



286 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

lish handshake, turned and said a casual and quite 
poHte "Begone !" And the interpreter vanished. 
The other officers came in, and hmped in, to have 
tea with our unusual visitor, and a cloud of 
officials looked on from the entrance and passage- 
ways, saluting profoundly when he left. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 
MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 

Sunday, March 26th. 
"IT 7E accept the defeat of Mukden as a shame- 
^ ^ f ul fact ; a last indictment of the Russian 
generals and the army ; and we lose ourselves, as 
best we may, in the dimensions and details of the 
world's greatest battle. It is strange the comfort 
the megalomaniacs can get out of the fact that 
the front of the army was one hundred miles wide, 
the defeat a hundred miles long. It does not com- 
fort me to consider that that mad, headlong 
retreat continued for one hundred miles. 

For the wounded, my heart bleeds. Sad enough 
is the state of those who fell, and lay until the 
Japanese advance came and carried them off. It 
will be long before we hear how it fared with the 
thousands who were thrown hastily into cars and 
sent to Harbin, without fire, food, coverings, 
nurses, or doctors. "We could not help it. The 
Japanese were upon us before we knew. We were 
worn out with three days' hard fighting, night 
and day, with a snowstorm and a blinding dust- 
storm; and we lay down at midnight five miles 

287 



288 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

from the Japanese lines. We woke up to find all 
Mukden filled with Japanese and the Russian army 
ten miles away. They treated us well. Here we 
are. That is all. War is not vaudeville, but we 
felt very foolish that morning in Mukden. It was 
our usual want of information — and hesitation, 
hesitation, hesitation — indecision. The same old 
curse of Russia. If the dust-storm had not been in 
their faces, the Japanese would have arrived 
sooner, and we would have been a larger company. 
That is all. They had maps of the country, and 
we had not. In all the years in Manchuria, our 
officers had made no topographical surveys ; and 
when they hurried up some maps for campaign 
use, they would have done as well for the Caucasus. 
If the map showed a mountain you might be sure 
that you would find instead a river too deep to 
ford. 

Then another captive raged at what he called 
the "deception" of General Nogi. It seems that 
Nogi's army never went into barracks at Port 
Arthur, at all. That grim old besieger did not let 
his men weaken in the luxuries of our Russian 
Capua. He moved his men and guns, as soon as 
Stoessel's inglorious army had marched out ; but 
he did not move them to face the Russian left, 
as our officers took it for granted he would do, and 
implicitly believed he had done. Having concen- 
trated their strength to meet him there, they think 



MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 289 

it a breach of faith that he circled away off and 
fell upon their right flank miles north of Mukden. 
There is an officer in the seventh ward who tells 
of the panic that seized his men, when the Japa- 
nese sprang upon them unexpectedly, shouting in 
Russian : "We are Nogi's men from Port Arthur.'' 

Vladimir and Lyov are sick with disgust that 
several of the paroled officers of the Port Arthur 
garrison were captured by Nogi's men at Sinmin- 
tun. They have been brought here, and Vladimir 
says no self-respecting man should speak to them. 
''Parole d'honneur means nothing to a Russian," 
the Japanese continue to say; for Port Arthur 
naval officers, who gave parole to take no further 
part in the war and were released, have been cap- 
tured lately trying to run ships into Vladivostok. 
Long before that, paroled officers from the Russian 
gunboats at Shanghai, went around through 
China to Port Arthur, and met death on Maka- 
roff's ship. Vl^hat can one say when these things 
happen, and the paroled officers are captured and 
brought here? 

I am sure many more concessions would have been 
made to us here, had it not been for the arrival of 
these dishonoured officers. 

How I hate, loathe,' the whole miserable busi- 
ness ! And Russia has now suffered such continued 
disgrace and defeats that love of country may 
not be dead within me, but love of autocracy and 



290 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

reverence for our fatally weak ruler are not within 
me any more. Poor hesitating, terrified, conscience- 
racked, nerve-torn sovereign! I pity you. Were 
there any hope for a stronger or better ruler, in 
any life next to yours, how fortunate it would be 
if you forsook the throne, and went away to live 
the quiet life of a country squire ! But the burden 
is yours. You must bear it. You cannot pass it 
to those less worthy. You must lead Russia out 
of the darkness to light. The talk of the 
"Awakening of China" is paralleled by the same 
greatly-needed Awakening of Russia ; and it 
comes more slowly. Ever since the French Revo- 
lution, the wise ones have known that a change 
must come in Russia. Force — ^brutal, pitiless force 
— has suppressed all aspirations for liberty and en- 
lightenment, and foreign conquests have distracted 
the public attention, as the gladiators and the 
arena did in old Rome. But this war has roused 
some worthy men of the nobility and bureaucracy 
at last to the point of boldness. Sviatapolk Mirsky 
has done wonderful things already, and the liberty 
of the press he has granted is a great step forward. 
Mertchensky now cries out for peace since Russia 
has defeated herself. But out of defeat may come 
the greatest victory. The thinking people, up- 
right, intelligent Russians, may take heart in their 
sorrows. 

Grievsky has his laugh now, but it is a bitter 



MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 291 

laugh, a heart-broken one, when he considers how 
the EngHsh have feared us all these years. "If 
the Japanese can make a laughing-stock of Kuro- 
patkin, can turn all his boasts back upon his head, 
and make him personally run — run from Haicheng, 
run from Liaoyang, run from the Shaho, and run 
last and fastest from Mukden — Lord ! what that 
cold-blooded devil of a Kitchener could do, with 
an army of his httle Goorkhas ! Good-bye, Fer- 
/^hana and Kashgaria 1 Good-bye, Trans-Caspia 1" 

'Qy ''^> 'Q^ ^V> 

Thursday, March 30th. 
With fifty thousand prisoners, they say, to come 
from Mukden, many are to be sent to further 
depots to make room here. Several have gone to 
Shidzuoka, near Fujiyama, but write back de- 
pressingly of their housing there. A few occupy 
the villa of the old deposed Tokugawa shogun, 
which is a labyrinth of small, dark cupboards. 
No Cossack officer can stand upright in it, when 
he wears his gros bonnet. The restrictions are 
severe in Shidzuoka ; no daily newspapers are 
allowed, and the missionaries cannot come and go 
as here. The Japanese petty official in brief 
authority is the same tyrant that the helpless 
suffer from everywhere. I dare say the Russian 
keepers of the Japanese prisoners at Medved are 
more severe, less simpatica even, than those we 
chafe against here. They, too, might be capable 



S92 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

of depriving the prisoners of their musical instru- 
ments, lest music foster a martial spirit; and 
might even prohibit card-plajing at the hospital. 

Some who have gone away write amusing ac- 
counts of the new places of detention. In one city 
the prisoners are quartered in a theatre, and they 
have organised an opera company of their mem- 
bers. They spend their days rehearsing the 
choruses and ballets of the grand opera — ^^Les 
Horios aux Enfers/' as they call the spectacle 
they are about to produce. The revolving stage 
and its ejffects amuse them, and they plan to urge 
it upon Petersburg impresarios. At another town, 
they are quartered in the pavilions of the public 
gardens, in the Zoo ! for a fact. "Appropriately, 
they have placed us as curiosities in the Zoological 
Garden," one writes. '^We have no more space nor 
liberty than our neighbours the stork and the 
bear." 

All grumble and lament, save the few who drive 
themselves with study and work; studying Japa- 
nese, studying French, English, German ; trans- 
lating into Russian the English translations of 
Japanese fairy tales, novels, and histories; trans- 
lating the many English and French standard 
books on Japan; as, except for Metchnikoff and 
De Wollant, our Russian literature lacks in general 
works, popular works on Japan, books of travels, 
impressions, analyses, such as the English have 



MUKDEN'S DESPAIR g9S 

in numbers. If Lafcadio Hearn had but written 
in Russian, this war could not have been. Had 
the court and our intellectuals only read 
^'Bushido,^' the war would have been prevented. 
We are being punished for our ignorance, that 
is all. The majority of Russians thought the 
Japanese no more than another Turcoman tribe — 
fish-eating heathens. That is all. This war was 
to be merely a hunting adventure for our Cos- 
sacks. They were to spit the tiny Kakamakis on 
their bayonets and toss them over their shoulders 
as lightly as so much hay. 

Even in their treatment of prisoners, how won- 
derfully well the Japanese have managed with 
this great number of horios. The officers grumble 
that they are not allowed the freedom French 
officers had in German cities in 1870, where at 
Wiesbaden and Frankfort they lived in hotels. 
They forget that there are no hotels, as such, in 
Matsuyama, and that the government furnishes 
here as much privacy and more foreign comforts 
than any tourist can command in a tea house; 
while the rank and file are in a heaven of plenty, 
cleanliness, comfort, and idleness they never 
dreamed of before, and that contrasts sharply 
with the suffering, the cold, disease, and starvation 
of the poor French prisoners in Dresden, Magde- 
burg, Mayence, Ulm, and Augsburg in Christian 
Germany, in 1870. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

THE HAPPY DAY 

Sunday, April 2nd. 

^ I ^OSABURO came to my house one morning 
-^ to say that he was going to Hiroshima, to 
meet his uncle who was returning from Manchuria 
by transport the next day. "And you know him 
too," said he. "He is also old tomodaichi [friend]. 
He was only Colonel Higuchi when you were in 
Tokyo, but now he is Lieutenant-General Baron 
Higuchi. He has done remarkable things in war 
with China ; and was very remarkable ruler of 
Taiwan — of Formosa, I mean. Now he is chief- 
of-staff of Field Marshal Marquis Oyama, and 
he is greatest brains of all of our army. Our 
Field Marshal, you know, is quite aged and very 
portly, and he does not do such active things now. 
He has much spirit, but his body is not so boyful. 
He is the clan general, we call him, the Satsuma 
military chief. He is commander of generals, and 
all young generals obey him very peacefully. 
They never quarrel at our headquarters and 
oppose each other; and our Field Marshal rules 
like father of family, and tells how each battle 

294 



THE HAPPY DAY 295 

shall be fought according to the plans of my uncle, 
the Lieuten ant-General Baron Higuchi. It is my 
uncle who has made this greatest battle of all the 
world at Mukden. Truly. He is going now to 
Tokyo to tell about it himself — Himself tell it to 
our Nippon Heika, to the Emperor." 

"Higuchi ! Higuchi ! The young officer, with 
such very quick eyes and such very fine counte- 
nance, handsome like an Italian, we used to say.'' 
Is that the one.?" 

"Yes. Yes, that is the same one you used to 
call Italian Colonel. Exactly the same officer. I 
shall tell him you are here, and shall I ask him any 
somethings for you.''" 

"Oh ! I am very content, Tosaburo san. Every 
one is very kind to me. All I wish for, you know, 
is that the danna san may soon get well enough to 
leave the hospital and come to my house to live. 
That is his fault. He is so slow. I say Hiaku! 
[hurry !] to him every day, but he is not obedient 
like my old kurumaya, you see." And we laughed 
at our small joke immensely. 

"But, Tosaburo, why do they not let the Russian 
lady at Kobe, who was a soldier and surrendered at 
Port Arthur — why do they not let her come down 
here to see Captain X ?" and then that young- 
sprig of Japanese militarism drew his shoulders 
up very square, made his countenance severe, and 
said : "Oh, miya sama, she is not wif es. Not truly 



296 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

wifes, you know. And the Japanese Government 
cannot allow shocking things, you know. If wifes, 
all right ; come to-morrow. I have heard my high 
officers here, when they were talking with French 
Consul, say what it is. Really shocking." 

"But, Tosaburo, here are two priests to marry 
them. Let her come here. Don't let them send 
her over to Shanghai." 

"Yes. She must go away, they have told Consul. 
He cannot marry without his general's permission, 
and that is distinguished soldier. General Stoessel, 
now wearing German Kaiser's merity sword, you 
gee, in far country," 

"Rubbish ! Rubbish ! General Smirnoff was his 
commander of fortress of Port Arthur. Will vou 
please tell officers that.^^ Only General Smirnoff's 
permission in a letter from Nagoya is necessary. 
Tell them. Truly I say so. Then the priest says 
ceremony, and it is all proper marriage, husband 
and wife. Not shocking, shocking, you young 
Englishman — you young Plum Pudding, as we 
used to call those pink-faced children at Kojimachi 
Koshikan." 

Tosaburo laughed immoderately at the old joke, 
and, quick as could be, said: "Oh! Oh! I shall 
do it all myself. We shall have a little Banzai 
with it. We shall have a little marry party at 
barracks, just like that English lady, you remem- 
ber. And we shall throw shoes and other vegetables 



THE HAPPY DAY 297 

— no, only rice, when they go 'going-way' as 
they called it. Oh ! I remember that so well. We 
all thought it curious. And my father and mother 
I have heard talk much about that curious foreign 
custom since then. And since then I have seen 
several foreign marries. My English teacher in 
Tsukiji, she has had a marry in the foreign church 
there. I shall ask general here to-day for some 
orders, before I go to Hiroshima with the de- 
spatches. You see. You look. Soon Russian 
soldier-girl will come from Kobe, I know. I am 
sure. We shall have a marry party on my return. 
You and I shall be the nakados [go-betweens]. 

Oh! Good!" 

^v> <::> "O^ <^ 

Monday, April 3rd. 
I found them shouting ^^VivasF' and drinking 
toasts to a newly arrived officer to-day, and they 
explained to me: "He had charge of those twin 
curses of war, the military attaches and the war 
correspondents. It was a duty to rightly earn 
one the St. Anne, and he was fairly promised that, 
if he would let his wards be captured. But he 
could not lose them. They always turned up safe, 
always escaped the enemy by a single hair. Luck 
had them in its keeping, until that night at Muk- 
den, when they told them, at midnight, that we 
were pushing the Japanese back, that we had them 
on the run then. So they went to sleep; and 



298 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

waked, to find us gone and themselves ten miles 
within Japanese lines! — guests of another head- 
quarters staff. It was worth his getting captured 
too, he thinks, to lose those beggars. He was 
caught himself at the Pass ; and so, not having 
reported the irreparable loss of the strangers in 
person, he may not get his St. Anne." 

Some queer sorts of officers have been brought 
to light by the Japanese dragnets thrown out to 
our army. I have been astounded to hear of mili- 
tary officers who could not read or write, as unedu- 
cated as mujiks. They are survivals of an old 
system, and of course would not have ever left 
Siberia but for this war. We take the ignorance 
of the rank and file as a matter of course, but we 
feel it as a bitter taunt when the Japanese order 
that those of the prisoners who cannot read or 
write shall learn to do so now. Japan cannot per- 
mit so many ignorant members in one community ! 
Those who can read and write must teach the 
others ! At Marugame and Himeji prisons, the 
Rurik sailors have already learned to read, and 
R is a volunteer teacher already. 

Another bonne houche came from one of the 
Protestant missionaries who made one of her school- 
boys read to her, in English, the gogai that came 
out during the great battle. He reads : "Kuro- 
patkin has telephoned to his Emperor, *I am inside 
of the Japanese. Please forgive.' " Grievsky 



THE HAPPY DAY 299 

appreciated this, but howls with rage to think 
that Kuropatkin is not literally inside of the 
Japanese — "inside of them as we are here — inside 
of a Japanese prison ! Ah ! He and his carload 
of icons came to dictate a treaty of peace in 
Tokyo ! It will be at Tomsk, more likely. But I 
forget. He has taken oath not to retreat beyond 
the Urals. Quite true. Quite true. It is his dis- 
tinguished, world-renowned successor, the well- 
known General Linievitch — 'Papa Linievitch' — 
who will advance boldly westward ! 'To Peters- 
burg !' inscribed on his banners. Bah ! a plague on 
all. Even the weather prophet, Demchinski, can 
rail at them. He and Mestchersky are now our 
military critics, under Sviatopolk Mirsky's free 
press rules ! Ah ! Gott, is the world all mad, or 

am I.'^" 

<:n^ <::> -Ov ''^:> 

Tuesday, April 4th. 

And now! Straight from the clear sky, as a 
bolt from the blue, comes an order for Vladimir 
to be removed from the hospital to my home ! At 
once ! For a fact ! 

While I was still at my luncheon yesterday, a 
bicycle messenger brought me a note from head- 
quarters to come to the chancery at two o'clock, 
or earlier, if possible. In the agitation, I hastened 
there at once, fearing everything. "Oh!" said 
His Insolence, the official interpreter: "You are 



300 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

ordered to remove the prisoner, Staff-Colonel von 
Theill, to your dwelling, and there act as Volunteer 
Red Cross nurse. You must give your oath to 
observe the regulations prescribed as to visits, 
correspondence, and telegrams. 

And the interview was over. 

I could hardly utter my thanks, much less ask 
questions. To turn my tragic joy to real comedy, 
up stepped the ^^Homunculus,^* as we call him, the 
netsuke, the hreloque, the one whom Grievsky vows 
he will wear away on his watch chain. He is the 
tiniest Japanese I have ever seen, with almost no 
legs at all. Well, up rose this living netsuke^ 
bowed, opened the door for me, and said: "I will 
show you the way !" 

Oh ! It was droll ! 

I walked slowly, thinking of myself as in a 
dream, and then I fairly ran, burst in upon Vladi- 
mir, and called him to "get ready quick, quick. 
Get up and come with me !" And he almost did 
so, in his sudden alarm at my irruption. 

Soon after, the chief-surgeon came, and formally 
said to us: "By telegraphic order of His Excel- 
lency, the Minister of War, the Staff-Colonel von 
Theill is to be immediately removed to the dwelling 
of Princess Sophia von Theill, and to be treated 
with the highest consideration, at the request of 
Lieutenant-General Baron Higuchi, who sends his 
compliments and further messages by letter." 



THE HAPPY DAY 301 

What an excitement there was there then ! 
Vladimir's half of a man servant, the nurses and 
D , all turned to and bundled up his posses- 
sions ; and we were so wild with selfish joy that 
it was only when I saw Lyov's wistful face, and 
then noticed the others' blank dismay, that I 
realised how I was robbing them. 

Within an hour Vladimir was bundled up, 
packed into a double jinrikisha, with many pillows 
around him and three coolies to pull, push, and 
steady him, and rode out of the gate ahead of me. 
Out into the open air ! Out into comparative free- 
dom and private life ! His first outing since he 
was carried in on a stretcher, believing himself 
about to die. 

Ah ! Tosaburo ! Tosaburo ! My friend indeed ! 
And the Italian Colonel ! Bushido is surely the 
living creed of my — enemies.^ 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

AT HOME— COLONEL AND MRS. 
VLADIMIR VON THEILL 

Wednesday, April 5th. 
TT was Tosaburo who had done it all — my jolly 
-*• little knias san, and when he returned to duty, 
he came to see us straight from headquarters. He 
brought the letter conveying the formal compli- 
ments of his Italian uncle, who begged to be remem- 
bered, and to know how he could serve me, etc., etc. 
But everything was done; all that heart could 
wish for. I could only express my profound thanks 
again and again. Then every one came to con- 
gratulate us; and Vladimir had hardly drunk in 
all his new surroundings, seen half of my pretty 
things, and only begun to look at the garden, when 
callers came. Every one called; from the gov- 
ernor and the commandant down to the last trades- 
man and coolie; and the startled house-boy asked 
Anna if he was to give a the complet to every 
kitchen caller also. "By all means," said Anna. 
"This is our Banzai, our matsuri. A feast to 
every one, certainly. The Barina would be very 
angry if you did not celebrate the danna sari's 

303 



AT HOME 303 

coming home. Run and get more mochi, and more 
sugar-flowers quickly, and red rice in plenty." 

We were touched to the heart by the simple 
gifts that came to us from all these humble folk. 
The jinrikisha coolies came with their head man to 
present a great bouquet of plum and quince blos- 
soms arranged in classic style, and to wish good 
health to the danna san. The butcher, the baker, 
the greengrocer, the old eggwoman, the vegetable 
dealer from the country, the fishman, every one 
who in any way purveyed to my little household, 
came to lay presents on the sunny engawa. Vladi- 
mir's blanched face in the long chair was a picture 
of pleased content and interest in all of them and 
their gifts of sugar, oranges, eggs, towels, sweets, 
flowers. Whenever there were no Japanese in 
sight, I swooped down upon him with my caresses, 
my forbidden kisses, by thousands ; for one could 
not be demonstrative at the hospital with other 
people always in hearing, and a curtain lifted at 
any moment without ceremony. To have him in 
my own home ! our own home ! all in my own care, 
every hour was rapture to even think of. 

And this was a home at last — our home. With 
Vladimir within its walls, I should not care if I 
were never permitted to go abroad. 

Anna would fairly have killed our patient with 
kindness, with all the delicacies of the Japanese 
marketj all the concoctions that her life in Ger- 



304 . AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

many, England, Spain, France, Italy, and Russia 
had taught her to make in the kitchens of those 
countries. Poor Vladimir's thin face sjlowed with 
pleasure, from morning till night. He closed his 
eyes and opened them sharply, to see that things 
were what they seemed to be; he pinched himself 
to find if he were surely awake ; and he threw salt, 
and did every known thing to capture and retain 
good luck beside him. 

"Come here, Sophie, and stay beside me. I am 
afraid to have you out of my sight for a minute, 
lest something happen and you never return. We 
surely are as happy now as we ever were on the 
Janiculum. To look out at this little stage garden, 
this piece of painted scenery of yours, is pleasure 
complete. I should never dare step off the edge 
of this engaxva^ though. I don't know my way 
around among the pasteboard rocks and the mil- 
liner's trees, and looking-glass lake, as do these 
Japanese theatrical artists you've engaged for 
the day's performance to amuse me. If I stepped 
out there, my foot would go through somewhere, 
and the whole thing come down in wreck and dust. 
Ah ! but it is perfect ! A perfect illusion as one 
sits here and looks at it. Very like a garden. I 
only want a hand magnifying glass to study its 
detail. Ah ! I see at last. The Japanese land- 
scape gardener first held a Claude Lorraine glass 
in his hand, and made his garden in those proper- 



AT HOME 305 

tions. Beautiful! Beautiful! and the angelic 
little pink Jcaido trees in their pots ! Ah ! it is too 
much ! too much beauty !" 

<:> -^o •<^ <^ 

Friday, April 7th. 
I went to the barracks to-day and I had such a 
welcome as quite turned my head. They had so 
much to tell me of how they missed Vladimir ; and 
all that had happened in the forty-eight hours of 
his absence ; how the new chapel was finished, and 
could not be consecrated this week because the 
priest had to go to Marugame to bury a poor 

sailor horio; of how Andrew Y would soon 

be put out to a temple; and the greatest news of 
all — how the girl-soldier bride was actually on her 
way down from Kobe ! Moreover, these good gos- 
sips knew that a conscript regiment was to leave 
for Vladivostok to-morrow; another awful siege 
of horrors to begin, and that ten conscripts had 
been shot at Osaka for refusing to go to war, poor 
boys. Also, they had heard that the twelve thou- 
sand Japanese prisoners in Russia were to be im- 
mediately exchanged for all the officers and a few 
hundred of the Russian soldiers now in Japan. All 
are anxious to return to Europe — Europe, where 
the political situation causes some of them more 
concern than the military mess in Manchuria. 
With the winter industrial strikes more severe than 



S06 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

ever, rioting at every spot of mobilisation, the 
sovereign swayed by one faction and another each 
day, and his Mephistopheles cousin in Germany 
frankly deserting our cause and criticising us 
openly, the darkest days are coming to Holy 
Russia. We look at each other blankly, and won- 
der if the long-prophesied and justly retributive 
revolution is upon us ; if Russia shall begin her 
era of Enlightenment only in bloodshed. But 
what other people in the world have secured their 
freedom and liberty without rivers of blood.'' 
Only the Japanese. 

<^ '<Z>' <^ "Q^" 

Monday, April 10th. 
Vladimir looked stupefaction when I said this 
the other night while reading him a curious little 
brochure : "Agitated Japan." There was a little 
bloodshed to put this Emperor in power, to restore 
him his rightful authority so long usurped by the 
military ruler, but the rights of the people and 
the Constitution were voluntarily conceded them. 
The Emperor promised them suffrage, a parlia- 
ment, and a constitution within a fixed number of 
years, all of his own accord, and he kept his prom- 
ises to the letter. Many residents think the Japa- 
nese not yet ready for parliamentary government ; 
but, with a restricted suffrage and an upper house 
of peers, there are safeguards, and the people are 



AT HOME SOT 

learning. When the Emperor declared the new 
order, he addressed a rescript to his people on 
education, a remarkable paper, in which he 
hoped that soon there would be no village with an 
ignorant family, and no family with an ignorant 
member. And to see the flocks of school children 
on the streets with their books every morning, that 
hope must now be realised. The Emperor foresaw 
that universal education was necessary to a mod- 
ern, enlightened order, to make his people able 
to compete with western nations, and there has 
been a fury of education for these forty years. 
Compulsory education is a complete misnomer, for 
the people clamour for more schools and for higher 
schools, and they are given them. The Japanese 
borrowed the free school system outright from 
America, and all the empire went to school. Since 
western learning was so necessary to compete with 
western people, they set to and acquired it. There 
was no Pobedonostseff to forbid and to close 
schools, hmit the number of pupils, exclude the 
Jews, and forbid the Poles and Finns to learn 
their own language. Instead of thirty-two thou- 
sand school teachers for that many new school- 
houses in Russian villages, Von Plehve gave thirty- 
two thousand secret police to spy upon the villages, 
and see if any reform agents or ideas found en- 
trance. We have wise statesmen and educators — 
philanthropists, who strive with all their influence 



308 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

against the police and the synod, to Hft the cloud 
of ignorance that rests upon the Russian peasantry, 
an ignorance so dense, so appalling, so sickening 
and hopeless that I have no heart in considering 
its alleviation — ^but, all who would do good to 
Russia, and save the ignorant from the evil of 
socialist ideas, are hampered and hounded, ter- 
rorised by janitors in the cities, by Von Plehve's 
police in the country, and there is no hope in us. 
We feel the hopelessness of the struggle, our help- 
lessness ; yet we know a change is coming. But 
long before that may the war end, or Vladimir 
get an exchange with one of the Japanese officers 
at Medved. 

Vladimir smiles grimly over the news from 
Russia that we read daily in our Kobe newspaper. 
Since the Zemsky Sobor was permitted, then for- 
bidden, and finally let assemble to present a peti- 
tion for reform and a constitution, the official 
mind at St. Petersburg has been a mere shuttle- 
cock. Since "Vladimir's Day," that unfortunate 
S2nd of January, rescript has followed upon 
rescript from the irresolute, soft-hearted sovereign 
at Tsarskoe, who hides in his guarded palace like 
the Sultan in the Yildiz Kiosque — even more a 
prisoner, more in fear of his own subjects, perhaps ; 
since the Sultan does go guarded once a week to 
Selamlik, and Nicholas does not stir abroad at 
all. There were rumours of flight from palace to 



AT HOME 309 

palace, of the desperate illness of the infant Czare- 
vitch, all of which are fortunately contradicted. 
But the autocratic government wavers from day to 
day, and in our frightened hearts we wonder if it 
is not surely tottering ; if this is not the end of the 
dynasty — Nicholas, the last of the Romanoffs. 
The few family letters that come to any one from 
Petersburg direct, are full of forebodings. One of 
the officers at Oguri has word of the sacking of his 
estates by the peasants ; and another hears that 
his student son was killed in a charge of Cossacks 
in Moscow streets; and the old Colonel hears of 
the death of his son in a sortie in Manchuria. 
Cheerful thoughts some of my patients have to 
help their convalescence! Another weeps as he 
looks at me, for he has not had a word or letter 
from his wife since he came here, ten months ago. 
He knows the man who fills her life — a brother 
officer who could control his exchange. 

The soldier-girl bride has come down from Kobe 1 
She stays at a Japanese tea house, near where the 
other Russian ladies are living, on the other side 
of the chateau, and it begins to look still more like 
the romance of a yellow-covered novel. His Japa- 
nese smile was a loud chuckle, all the while Tosa- 
buro was telhng me about her. "Oh! I wish you 
would look, and tell me how you think. I cannot 
say that word beauty, when I see her ; but maybe 
you will tell me. She has short hairs like a man, 



SIO AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

or just like a widow. Oh! She does not look Hke 
you," and, with childlike naivete, Tosaburo put his 
finger on his own well-cut nose and flattened it down 
to mujik type, and squinted his eyes smaller. We 
both laughed, and Vladimir declared it enough; 
that he saw her, as in a photograph. 

Tosaburo only knew that she had arrived ; that 
the French Consul in Kobe had had her supplied 
with proper clothing — a trousseau — and that they 
were at their wits' end at the headquarters here 
as to what to do about it all. *'J'z/ suis et j*y reste'^ 
was her motto as much as Alexeieff's. After some 
days she was permitted to regularly visit her 
lover, and he was promised a transfer to another 
city where he should live in his own private house, 
with his faithful bride. I saw her several times, 
in the shops and on the street ; I met her, too, at 
the barracks ; and then, one day, Tosaburo told me 
that they had had '*the marry party" in the Httle 
chapel at the barracks, and that they had gone off 
with twenty officers to a city on the west coast. 
Exit Romance ! Cupid without wings. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

LOVE LAUGHS AT PRISON BARS 

Sunday, April 23rd. 

WORD has come down from the higher officers 
at Nagoja that the Czar will not ask for 
the exchange of prisoners ; that : ^^He — does — not 
— need — his — officers''! but, that he "Prays God 
will soften the pains of captivity, and quicken the 
arrival of the time when they may return homel" 

It came to me like a blow in the face. 

"Let Nicholas himself quicken the time of our 
return," said Vladimir — "Exchange us, or make 
peace — Peace on any terms he can get, as Mest- 
chersky says — Port Arthur gone, Mukden gone, 
the fleet gone, Kuropatkin fallen, and Japanese 
prison lists and parole lists our army's best regis- 
ter, for what should we further expose our in- 
capacity and rottenness? for a few flour mills 
and a frozen harbour ? Let us get back to Russia, 
and conquer ourselves, defeat the real enemy en- 
trenched in the palaces and ministries of Peters- 
burg." 

To-day the Consul appeared for his domiciliary 
visit, as he called it, having been surprised to find 

311 



312 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

us gone from the barracks. "M. SiemenoflP goes 
to Kioto next week, I suppose you know," said the 
Consul, smiling, and we both started with surprise. 

"No ! No !" I wailed at the thought of losing 
my special charge and protege. "But Madame la 
Comtesse, what happens to her.?" I asked. 

The Consul broke out in a great laugh, 
shrugged his shoulders, and made gestures with 
both hands; and then my slow wits wakened, and 
I joined in Vladimir's and the Consul's laughter 
at my stupidity. 

Oh ! Those clever young people ! How dull 
we old people grow. Of course the Consul is 
Cupid's messenger, the Deus ex machina, who 
arranges all, whom the Contessa consults. And 
we had thought the silence so ominous ! Only the 
daily post cards coming, with no messages on them 
at all. Telepathy, of course. 

And while we have gone on in our little routine 
here, immersed in ourselves and our daily small 
happenings, the Contessa herself has been down to 
Hong Kong, and the Russian Consul has cabled 
to Petersburg for official and family sanction, the 
permission of the commandant of Lyov's corps du 
garde, to the marriage. 

"Then," I asked, "how did that shower of post 
cards keep on coming from Kobe if the Contessa 
was in Hong Kong.^^" 

"Ah !" said the agent of romance, "my office 



LOVE LAUGHS AT PRISON BARS SIS 

boy did that. A large packet lay ready addressed 
on my table, and when he dusted my desk each 
morning he took the top one off and put it in the 
post box. That saved him from dusting it, you 
see, an automatic beneficence." 

Also he gave us the news that Captain Siemenoff 
is to be removed to the Kioto district, and there 
permitted to dwell with his own family. His 
family ! His family ! Vladimir and I laughed. I 
wanted to rush to the barracks and see Lyov at 
once, but it was late, the Consul was weary and 
wanted to rest the hour or so with us, until time to 
take the train to Takahama for the evening boat 
to Kobe. And anyhow, as he described it to me, 
Lyov was steeped in joy and reveries so profound 
that no one could disturb him. "He can be happy 
alone with himself now," said the Consul. "You 
need not go near him. But ah ! la Comtesse! 
What cleverness ! what force ! what ability ! Such 
a clear head. She is more like an American 
almost. And it was the old American Minister 
who has helped and advised her. Her own uncle, 
M. V Anglais, would not hear to it at first. He 
would forbid the banns ; he would not permit them 
to be posted in any British edifice in Japan, nor 
would any Church of England clergyman perform 
the marriage, he declared. And Madame la Com- 
tesse announced her prospective baptism by the 
Russian bishop in his guarded retirement at 



SI 4 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Tsuruga Dai, and that her Russijfication would 
be concluded by a Japanese priest in the Greek 
church at Kioto !" 

"The American Minister conducted the nego- 
tiations, the pourparlers. He argued with the 
islander uncle, and temporised with the scandal- 
ised islander aunt, who wrung her hands and cried : 
'Oh, what will the Japanese say?' I suppose she 
will never get a special decoration from the Crown 
now. So this brave old man from the Virginias 
faced the English aunt and bearded his colleague, 
the English lion of an uncle; consulted with my 
chief, and even went down to Kioto to see how the 
convert was proceeding with her novitiate. He 
told me to 'hustle,' if you comprehend that droll 
word; and I have hustled, he has hustled, she has 
hustled, and it is only the distinguished pris- 
oner who has been idle and has not hustled — Tout 
le monde out hustle. Heavens ! What a bride ! 
What beauty ! What distinction ! What ability ! 
and riches, besides ! The uncle has only now in- 
sisted that there should be an ante-nuptial con- 
tract, in which Captain Siemenoff should waive all 
participation in her estate. There have been 
cablings and signatures of papers in numbers at 
Tokyo, and to-day Captain Siemenoff has signed 
away any control of her property in Canada. I 
have brought the papers, and your Lieutenant 
Kato has witnessed the signature. He pledged 



LOVE LAUGHS AT PRISON BARS 315 

himself also to bestow upon her certain properties 
in jewels upon his return to Russia, and voila! 
It is all. It is finished. It rests only for Captain 
Siemenoff to reach Kioto with his confreres in 
captivity, to give his pledges for observing the 
regulations while in separate residence; to meet 
Madame la Comtesse at the church altar, and then 
drive to the villa at Fushimi, which I have leased 
for her." 

;;<<:> "vZ^ ^v> 5:> 

Friday, April 28th. 

I have been to see Sandy von Rathroff, and, 
having sent word ahead, that young agitator was 
awaiting me among the tombstones, with samo- 
var and teacups ready. He had even a lemon to 
grace the occasion, and we had a nice little tete-a- 
tete under whispering pines on the softest of spring 
days. With Lyov gone, Sandy becomes my par- 
ticular charge. 

Now that mild weather has come, the casts are 
off Vladimir's knee, and he is ordered to sit erect in 
a chair properly, and begin to walk. The dressing 
gowns are cast away, and my invahd emerges from 
his chrysalis, and dines in a dinner coat like any 
other gentleman. Half of trading Nagasaki has 
moved up to Matsuyama with its wares for 
foreign custom, and the tailors and shirt makers 
are doing a great business. Modern curios, 



SI 6 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

hideous coarse embroideries, rubbishy metal and 
lacquer work, and gaudy porcelains have come in 
quantity to tempt the idle officers ; and, oh ! sad 
commentary on the horios^ taste and knowledge! 
are bought up rapidly at prodigious prices. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 
THE RUSSIAN ARMADA 

Sunday, May 91st. 

THE departure of Lyov last week has left us 
a little sad. He was a link with our past 
life, and represented to us our happier days, when 
Russia was a great power, and we were but a pair 
of discontented Finnish subjects sulking, as our 
former colleagues thought, in idleness in Rome, be- 
cause Vladimir had not received the envoyship 
so long due him and so clearly promised him. 

The two fleets have left Cochin China, have 
joined, a,nd are approaching Japan. We are all 
tense with excitement. Von Woerffel and his naval 
friends are wrought up to such a pitch that a 
street peddler's cry nearly throws them into 
spasms. They hardly sleep at night, feeling that 
the crisis approaches, that the whole war now 
hangs upon Rojestvensky ; that there must be 
victory and our release — or defeat and our re- 
lease by a shameful peace. All Dairinji is a de- 
bating club, and those naval Jiorios argue all day 
and all night upon the probable course of the fleet 
after it leaves the China Sea. "But suppose he 

317 



318 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

meets Togo^s whole fleet when he tries raiding that 
bay full of unarmoured transports at Dalny !" 
says Vladimir, when Von WoerfFel has outlined a 
plan of action for the Baltic fleet. 

"Ah ! he expects to meet it somewhere, does he 
not? He has not come out here to avoid Togo's 
fleet, and only make a practice cruise. Let him do 
some damage first, to make sure. It is a pity he 
could not run into Kiaochau and help the Czare- 
mtch out. Soon his uncertainty will be ended. 
Victory for the Baltic fleet, and our term will be 
short. Defeat — ah! we may prepare to stay here 
forever — forever then." 

Poor Sandy von Rathroff* is keyed to the same 
pitch of excitement as the rest of us, at the coming 
of the long-awaited deliverance, and at times is 
loyally Russian. I rallied him in a shop the other 
day on his plan of going to America when he is 
released, remaining there as a teacher of lan- 
guages, and marrying some heiress with dollars 
and a big estate. Poor boy ! he gets wof ully home- 
sick and heartsick at times. We spoke of Japa^ 
nese patriotism, the pure love of country, and 
he burst out feelingly: "That is what I envy the 
Japanese. If I only could love my country ! In- 
stead, I have only hatred for Russia, for those who 
rule Russia, who are Russia. Sixty thousand of 
the best blood and brains of Russia were unjustly 
and brutally driven out of it in two years by 



THE RUSSIAN ARMADA 319 

Sipiaguin. Sixteen thousand intelligent men were 
exiled from Petersburg that spring they arrested 
me. Ah ! it is sickening to think of in this era of 
civilisation. We are no better than the Persians 
or the Afghans, as far as honest or intelligent 
government goes. We persecute learning, educa- 
tion, intelKgence. We punish and degrade where 
civiHsed countries honour and promote. We send 
all the brains and abihty of Russia to vegetate, 
to drag out useless, embittered lives in the 
Caucasus and Siberia. Physicians, surgeons, even 
artists and musicians are exiled at the whim of 
some ignorant, drunken mujik, temporarily ex- 
alted by a uniform. Von Plehve is type of them. 
His creatures are no different from him — ^base in- 
grates all, who like Von Plehve would denounce and 
ruin the humane couple who took him as a starving 
waif, reared and educated him. In all Russia, 
there seems no figure worthy of respect. Au- 
tocracy has sunk to the lowest dregs ; and the very 
scum of the well-dressed, but truly ignorant 
classes, are in office, are ruling everywhere in the 

empire." 

<:> <> <:> 'N^ 

Tuesday, May 30th. 

Our suspense is ended. The usual thing, quite 

the expected thing, has happened. Rojestvensky 

has failed— so egregiously, completely, abjectly, 

that we are content to know the bare first facts 



320 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

without detail or explanation. As if there could 
be any explanation ! 

Admiral Togo^s telegram is enough : "The main 
force of the enemy's Second and Third Squadrons 
has been almost completely annihilated. There- 
fore, please be at ease." 

"Please be at ease ! Please be at ease !" What 
a complete, all-embracing, final expression is this 
of the Japanese admiral ! What a convincing 
message to sovereign and people! 

'<^ '^:;;>' •<;> -^^ 

Friday, June 3nd. 
Poor Vladimir, who had improved greatly in his 
general tone of late, is now sunk in the uttermost 
despair. He has taken to the long chair, and lies 
with his eyes closed half the time. They are 
reddened and swimming with tears, and he has 
slipped back weeks, months almost in his physical 
condition, in these three days. The street sounds, 
the bells of the gogai boys, cause him pain, and I 
can see him quiver as the joyful clang and clash 
of the bells of the fleet-footed news runners 
approach, pass, and die away down the street. We 
have no wish to go out, to walk anywhere, to look 
upon the radiant Japanese faces and the sun- 
burst of decorations, the unbroken lines of flags and 
lanterns, and red and white striped festal curtains 
that now line the streets. We have no wish to meet 



THE RUSSIAN ARMADA 321 

our countrymen; to note the signs of woe in their 
faces ; to talk over and speculate upon this last 
crowning infamy and disgrace. There is no 
longer question of how it could happen. We know 
too well that it is the same old story of unpre- 
paredness, want of prearrangement, of unfitness, 
inability. Rojestvensky was as a child with a fleet 
of toy ships, when he sailed head on into Togo's 
trap, and let the Japanese batter him by day, and 
torpedo him by night, and gather up the frag- 
ments of the great fleet and bring them to Sasebo. 
Not since the destruction of the Spanish Armada 
in Europe, and of Kublai Khan's fleet here on these 
very same shores, has there been anything 
approaching this one-sided naval battle. Victory 
was all to the Japanese from the start, and the 
work went on like a battue of pheasants in an 
English park. 

And the surrenders ! Oh ! disgrace of all dis- 
graces. Nebogatoff^ hands over a fleet of ships, 
and lives on ! Surely the Japanese are right in 
their contempt of those who fear death more than 
dishonour. Soon we shall have some of these 
precious Baltic-ers here. And how shall we re- 
ceive them? 

We hear that the Cossacks and sailors at Cho- 
enji sent up a mighty cheer when they heard of 
the defeat, because — it meant the end of the war 
and their speedy return to Russia! They are 



822 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

talking eagerly now of the return to Odessa, and 
of what they will see and do on the way. While 
we — do we really want to return to Russia? Do 
we want to see again the spires and domes, the 
Neva front of the palace, and the Nevsky? In 
all truth, no. Both Vladimir and I, without 
acknowledging it to each other, seem to be drifting 
away from all love for or loyalty to Holy Russia. 
Each month here has loosened the tie, laid bare, 
at all this long distance, the traits in Russian 
character, the features of Russian life, the prin- 
ciples — or want of principle — and things that are 
most antipathetic to us in Russia's corrupt, medi- 
aeval government — things which everything in us 
resents and revolts against. 

Now, less than in the happy years just gone by, 
could we consent to live in Russia, or Vladimir to 
wear the uniform of office, to uphold and defend 
the Czar and his government. Already, I long for 
the quiet comfort of my little place in Devon, the 
pleasant social order of English life, and all that 
such a stay means to us after this year of sorrow 
and humiliation. I should be rejoiced were Vladi- 
mir a British subject; our lives and future secure; 
Russia a dark and unhappy past. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

TWO FUTURES 

Saturday, June 3rd. 
'T^HE Consul gave us the luncheon hour yes- 
•■' terday, and he brought us the news of the 
strange marriage in Kioto, at which he and the 
English Consul were present. The consignment 
of horios reached Kioto one day, the preliminaries 
were arranged the next; and on the third after- 
noon, Lyov, a Japanese officer, and a Russian 
general went to the Russian church, met the Con- 
tessa's party there, and Japanese priests per- 
formed the ceremony. The Contessa had brought 
her poor uncle to tolerating the idea, and Madame 

H , after oceans of tears and upbraiding, had 

made the best of it. The American Excellency had 
come down out of pure good nature, but was 
haled back to Tokyo the night before. He wanted 
to see what sort of a vara avis, what unusual speci- 
men of a horio, it could be, to induce a rich, young, 
and beautiful woman, — of title and good family, 
with no encumbrances, with everything in the 
worldly sense to gain by remaining single or wait- 

323 



Sm AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

ing, — to hasten to marry a prisoner of war, a 
subject of a defeated, discredited empire, officer 
of a beaten army. 

The French Consul, acting as the Russian Con- 
sul, took over "Mir a Foresta, a British subject; 
widow ; aged twenty -five years ; religion, Greek 
Orthodox," as a Russian subject. He said the 
solemnity of all, including Lyov and Mira, made 
it more like a funeral than a wedding. 

For them, all is rose colour, naturally ; and they 
are full of bright plans for the future, which the 
speedy conclusion of the war makes possible. They 
can happily forget everything at this moment. 
We, and the others, cannot. 

<:> <^ <^ <^ 

Sunday, June 4th. 
It is touching to see the sorrow in every face 
we know so well, and to recognise how every hope 
and dream has fallen since Rojestvensky's defeat, 
and NebogatofF's surrender. Of all the Kamramh 
harbour full of vessels that was so nearly France's 
undoing, a few refugee ships at Manila, a stray 
torpedo boat at Shanghai, are all that fly the 
Russian flag. The rest are at the bottom of the 
sea, or handed over to the Japanese by cowardly 
officers who feared their own crews more than the 
enemy; who obeyed the Japanese signals more 
willingly than they obeyed their own admirals. 



TWO FUTURES 825 

Better that Russia had never attempted to be a 
naval power, than to end in such a fiasco. 

Sandy is of course in a ferment of excitement 
since the hopes others had based on the arrival of 
the Baltic fleet are now so completely dashed. 
He foresees a speedy peace and his own escape to 
the land of liberty across the Pacific. Many are 
counting as surely as he on shaking free from 
their allegiance to Russia, and the current of our 
monotonous life here has been strongly stirred. 
Every one has plans, and many have such fore- 
bodings and anxieties as it touches me to see. 

All the news from Russia tells of discontent, 
uprisings among workmen in the cities and peas- 
ants in the country. The Great Awakening is 
surely at hand, the Revolution, the Debacle. Paul 
Lessar's death, which occurred a few days before 
Rojestvensky's terrible fiasco, was another blow 
to Vladimir, although we have really been so long 
expecting it. We are thankful that he was spared 
this last ignominy. Poor Paul! Even had your 
life lasted a little longer, the guns of Togo's vic- 
tory would have closed it. 

Tragedy would seem to be heaped on tragedy, 
if there were not touches of comedy in even the 
Rojestvensky promenade towards disaster. In 
one breath, these surrendered officers from the 
Baltic fleet tell of the insubordination, the incipient 
mutiny that reigned on every ship. How Nebo- 



326 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

gatofF's captains had no sooner gone to his flag- 
ship to arrange for surrender than the officers left 
behind looted the ships' safes and threw overboard 
the moneys they could not carry. They admit, too, 
that they did throw the wounded overboard, 
because they were cumbering the decks, making 
it slippery, and unnerving the gunners with their 
screams and groans. They naively lament that 
the hospital ship having been apprehended in 
carrying troops, despatches, and ammunition, was 
seized by Togo, and brought in with the other 
prizes. Then the youngest and best-looking sister 
of charity asked to be allowed to go to the Sasebo 
naval hospital and nurse her "uncle." This inci- 
dent is detailed in the Japanese and in our Kobe 
newspapers in all sincerity, and if it has been 
cabled to Petersburg, one can fancy the roars 
of laughter at the naval club and in all the salons. 
And how the treaty-port papers jeer at the whole 
promenade of this "Mr. R. J. Ventsky" from Libau 
to Sasebo ! 

Although confined to their ships' decks ever 
since October, when they left Russia, these new 
horios complain most loudly about the restrictions 
of their places of detention, and of their inability 
to roam the streets at all hours. It grates upon 
them most of all, that their outdoor day should 
end at six o'clock, and the long, long evenings are 
their distraction. Cards and hard drinking fill the 



TWO FUTURES 327 

hours as best they can; a very few study and 
occupy themselves in rational ways ; but the most 
of them, knowing little of shore life save the rou- 
tine of club and admiralty yards, are at their 

wits' end. 

^vix '^i^y- ^s:> <::> 

Tuesday, June 6th. 
"The game is up, the cards are shown, and 
Russia's boasts prove mere bluff," says Sandy 
scornfully. "Hereafter, I should blush to call 
myself a Russian. I am not — I ceased to be, when 
Sipiaguin unjustly threw me and my classmates 
into a criminal's prison, and then exiled us to the 
Trans-Baikal. Fortunately, that in the end was 
the means of getting me here, where I can fully 
measure to the fraction Russia's right to be called 
a Christian and civilised nation. When I get to 
America, it will be more apparent still. I am 
thankful my name is German ; although of course 
in a republic I shall have to drop the von and be 
known as Citizen Rathroff . Ah ! that will be good 
to vote, to elect a ruler, to help govern ! even if I 
must be waiter at a cafe, or drive a tramcar, or 
carry bags at a railway station to earn a living. 
And then, you know, there are such wonderful 
chances over there. If some Mademoiselle Dollars 
does not admire my pretty eyes — I am not bad- 
looking, as you know — I may achieve millions by 
myself and go back to Petersburg to dazzle the 



328 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

Nevsky in the guise of an American billionaire. 
Even come as Ambassador ! even have the chance 
to spit upon Von Plehves and Sipiaguins as I go 
hjo Ah ! those are my castles in America ! 

"Ah, America, my new country — of thee I 
sing!" he exclaimed, trolling the air of "God save 
the Queen" in his joy. "I am cultivating these 
American popes now most assiduously. I am ask- 
ing how to travel there, where they live, how they 
live, how much it costs to live there — how much 
clothes cost, and beef and bread. I don't dare say 
a syllable about tobacco and spirits. It would 
shock them, and lose me all my fountains of in- 
formation. Ah, Matushka, you do not know how 
many others in this very Matsuyama are planning 
and dreaming, as I am planning and dreaming ! 
I know, by all the signs which I think I am con- 
cealing myself. We all know better than to speak 
aloud. We shall meet, nevertheless, a very con- 
siderable number over there, when the peace has 
been made. 

"Ah! will the day soon come.f* Never too soon 
to me. In how many months will it be that I 
stand in Washington's country, and become a citi- 
zen — a fellow-citizen — of the great Roosevelt? 
Oh, if our Nicholas had been a strong fighting man 
like that ! 

"Truly William of HohenzoUern is right when 
he says the Japanese are the scourge of God, like 



TWO FUTURES S29 

Attila and Napoleon, and that the Russians lost 
because they were enervated by alcoholism and 
immorality. Oh! you should hear the loyalists at 
my lodgings discuss those speeches of the Kaiser at 
Wilhelmshaven and Strasburg! They do not so 
much mind his fling at Russian Christianity and 
its deplorable state — that truth does not cut them 
like his comments on the military. After advising 
Nicholas how to run the war, he takes to criticis- 
ing us. Perfidious ! Like his truckling to the 
Japanese after the truth about Port Arthur was 
known, and declaring that he only wanted peace 
and his own home empire. To prove that, he walks 
into this Morocco affair, and is within one hair- 
line of war with France. A has with the univer- 
sal genius !" 



CHAPTER XL 

"PEACE! PEACE!" 

Thursday, June 8th. 
QURPRISE treads upon surprise — Sandy's 
^ hero, the American Roosevelt, has intervened 
and asked both Russia and Japan to name com- 
missioners and see if they cannot agree to make 
peace ! 

In my first gasp of astonishment, as the cook 
burst excitedly into our presence, with the little 
pink gogai, crying, "Peace ! Peace ! The Ameri- 
can Emperor says: 'Stop fighting! Stop fight- 
ing !' " — in the first moment of shock, I could 
hardly stand upon my feet. Good news is so 
unusual to us, anything pleasant coming by 
gogai has hitherto been so unknown, that I quite 
lost my head for the moment. 

Vladimir lay sleeping, dozing in the warm soft 
afternoon air of the June day, but the fanfare of 
the gogai bells in the street soon roused him. 
'^Vladimir! Vladimir! The Peace! The Peace! 
It has come. God has given it to us at last." — 
And I burst into uncontrollable sobs. 

Vladimir, dazed, rose slowly to a sitting posture, 

330 



"PEACE! PEACE!" 381 

and tried to stand, but he tottered on his weak 
knees and sank to the long chair again and buried 
his face in his hands. In silence, we sat and 
listened to the chime of gogai bells, as the news- 
boys ran a^bout the town, and the sounds echoed 
down the long stretch of the moat and against the 
chateau's hillside. We must have sat in this way 
for fully ten minutes, when the house-boy slid the 
door panel, said: "Kato sanT^ and sat back on 
his heels with radiant countenance, as Tosaburo 
clattered in with all his accoutrements — no time 
to lay aside his sword belt at the door. 

"Oh ! Oh ! I have come ! I have come as fast 
as I could, to be the first to make you the present 
of good news, but I see that gogai bell has told 
you all. Now it will be peace, and we shall be best 
friends." 

With joyful faces, we sat and talked it over and 
over; how it would be done; where the conference 
would meet; who would be the commissioners to 
negotiate; and how soon we should get away from 
the little \jo city, where, really, now that it draws 
near an end, our stay — has — been — a — happy — 
one! 

Thoughtful Anna slid the door and entered with 
a tray, and the house-boy held the sparkling bottle 
of cheer swathed in the white robes of peace. 

"A flag of truce ! A flag of truce !" said Vladi- 
mir, pointing to it, and Tosaburo burst into 



332 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

chuckles of joy at the joke. We cHcked glasses 
and drank to the white angel of peace per se, and 
to the American Roosevelt, who has forced the 
situation upon both combatants. We drank to the 
last dancing bubble, and then Vladimir whirled his 
glass overhead, with the fire and gaiety of youth, 
and tossed it out on the garden stones — I threw 
mine also, and frantically embraced him in the 
presence of Tosaburo. 

The gardener heard the crash and stole to a 
gap in the shining green hedge; the cook peeped 
forth from another green frame ; and the boy and 
amah peered across from the dining-room door. 

"Come ! Come !" cried Vladimir, motioning to 
the staff. "All must drink a Banzai in champagne- 
sake with me, and celebrate the end of war." And 
in proper form, they ranged themselves, accepted 
the glasses from Anna with easy grace and pro- 
found bows, and let her pour them frothing to the 
brim. Vladimir made the toasts, to "Peace," to 
"the' Emperor in T®kyo," and to "Roosevelt in 
America," and then led the Banzais. The gar- 
dener, as elder of the company, responded for 
them with graceful thanks. They bowed pro- 
foundly and shuffled away, chuckling and cheerful. 

^^ ^S^ ^^ ^^ 



"PEACE! PEACE!" 33S 

Sunday, July 16th. 

Days and weeks have passed, and the Japanese 
Peace Envoys are only departing to meet Sergius 
de Witte ! in Washington ! 

Blank astonishment has overwhelmed every Rus- 
sian, when, after several names, De Witte's was 
announced. "I would rather die here, rather stay 
here years, than make inglorious peace now," 
sobbed Captain M . "And to gain my free- 
dom through Sergius de Witte! Oh! this is 
hard!" 

The Angel of Peace could only be believed as 
posing to the world's admiration for a deceitful 
moment, and wore sinister mien in the garb of 
Sergius de Witte. None trusted her — him — the 
high-handed genii, whose railroad and industrial 
policies were to recreate Russia, but instead, 
have ruined her. First the Trans-Siberian 
railway; and then a war to hold and keep the 
railway. 

"I should not be here but for Serge de Witte," 
growled one. "I mortgaged my last estate to a 
Jew, and put it in his cursed industrial shares. 
They paid me forty per cent, and then fifty per 
cent, and then — since 1901, nothing! Before I 
could redeem my lands I was penniless. I rode 
back from Paris in third-class cars by night. I 
applied for service on the frontier. They gave me 
a Siberian regiment of railway guards at Harbin. 



334 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

We were moved to Port Arthur, and there my 
career ended. I have very truly served twelve 
years in one. And now, I must owe my freedom to 
Serge de Witte ! A curse on him ! What has 
Nicholas Alexandrovitch come to, that he chooses 
him? A post worthy of our ablest diplomat, for 
the cleverest, wiliest ambassador, and he gives it 
to the Station Master. Ah! It is a loan, not a 
treaty, that he seeks." 

;<^ •<::> <:::>« <:i>' 

Thursday, July 20th. 
Poor Nebogatoff and his men are in the saddest 
plight of all, every one now turning cool glances 
and sneers towards them, because of Nicholas' dis- 
pleasure. They are prisoners and they are not 
prisoners. Having surrendered, they were oiFered 
the same privileges as the Port Arthur officers, 
and Nebogatoff cabled, asking authority for those 
who wished to do so to go on parole. The 
sovereign ignored the message, and it was repeated. 
Then the French Ambassador at Petersburg was 
cabled to present the case, and for answer, Nebo- 
gatoff and all his officers were stricken from the 
rolls of the Imperial Navy ! deprived of their com- 
missions, degraded, disgraced without regular form 
of court-martial. Their dismay, their sorrow, and 
their chagrin are pitiful to witness. As they can- 



"PEACE! PEACE!" 385 

not any longer be considered prisoners, they are 
men without a country, without an occupation 
even, since Vladimir says the average of them could 
never get employment in any mercantile marine, 
hardly on Volga barge service. 

It is a sad situation, a dilemma none could ever 
have foreseen when NebogatofF's council of officers 
voted that resistance was hopeless and the sur- 
render of two thousand useful lives better than 
giving them to be battered by Japanese shells and 
drowned among the rocks of the Korean coast. 
They have not done anything nearly as iniquitous 
and cowardly as Stoessel in his surrender, yet he 
gets a sword, and Nicholas, pitiless in the bitter- 
ness of his chagrin, visits his wrath upon these poor 
naval men. 

<:>■ '^^ '«Ci>^ -'Qi.' 

Sunday, July 23rd. 
One of the American popes has been to Kioto, 
and seen the SiemenolFs at their Fushimi villa. 
"A honeymoon in captivity !" he exclaimed. "Why, 
Captain Siemenoff can stand captivity forever. 
He loves his prison — and his fellow-prisoner ! 
They are the most ideal pair of lovers the sun ever 
saw. They have a beautiful Japanese house on a 
hill, with fine old screens and fusuma, and a gar- 
den that is a copy of the Sambo-in garden; and 
the house is already a godown. It is fairly 
crowded with the curios Mrs. Siemenoff has 



Sm AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

bought. She is a good customer of the Kioto 
dealers, and will soon be a dangerous rival for 
you, Mrs. von Theill. You must be glad that she 
chose another field, for you could not both have 
gleaned here. 

"Captain Siemenoff says the military and police 
need not trouble to watch him. The art shops of 
Kioto do that, day and night. 'I slide the shoji,^ 
he says, 'in the morning, and there waits a Japa- 
nese Smile and something tied up in a blue cotton 
cloth. "I am of Ikeda," says the smile, and pro- 
duces things that send my wife into ecstasies, and 
she buys them all before breakfast. He goes, and 
another bundle and smile come to the front of our 
garden stage. "I am of Hayashi," says the smile ; 
and his end is like the first. A third smiles loudly, 
and says : "I am of Yamanaka," and he discloses 
more Japonaiseries and Chinoiseries, and Madame 
gives another chit. "I am Kita," "I am Shimizu," 
"I am Fukuda," say other smiles all day long. 
Then there are ancient men of Fushimi, with voices 
like foghorns and manners like velvet, and a man 
of a million wrinkles from Nara. He must have 
sat for the picture of old Longevity. When 
Madame makes moues at his prices, he creases a 
few more wrinkles into his visage, and her soft 
heart relents. They all cheat us and overcharge 
us ; but we like it. We enj oy life so much that 
that is even part of the enjoyment. 



"PEACE! PEACE!" 337 

" 'What do we collect ? Oh ! everything, every- 
thing ; from screens and bronze goldfish bowls to 
netsuhes and dolls, toys in gold lacquer ; everything 
— porcelain, pottery, tea jars, tea bowls, paint- 
ings, prints, pewter, brass, wood, leather, sword 
guards, brocades, embroideries, dolls, fans, rosa- 
ries—All, all! Being human, everything human 
interests us. We have spent days at the potter's, 
turned the wheel, shaped the bowl, glazed, fired, 
and acquired it. We have lived beside the lacquer 
artists, magnifying glass in hand. We have had 
painters by the score hold day-long seances on 
our mats, and give demonstrations and art tourna- 
ments for us. We have had jugglers, dancers, 
fencers, jiu jitsu experts, wrestlers, and archers 
to delight us in our own compound. The high 
priests at the temples are our dearest friends. 
They condescend to take ceremonial tea with us; 
and show us all the inner treasures. The police- 
men at the Art Museum run to tell us and show us 
when an exhibit is changed, and all the children 
and toy venders at Inari are our special cronies.' 

"I assure you, Mrs. von Theill, those two young 
people are so absurdly and completely happy at 
Fushimi that I doubt if they pay any heed to 
the course of events. I was with them for two 
hours, and we did not once discuss the peace con- 
ference. Out of the evil of this war has come good 
for them." 



CHAPTER XLI 

AFTER THE WAR 

Sunday, August 6th. 
TF war is a fearfully slow business, so is peace. 
-*■ There was interminable delay before Nicholas 
would agree to negotiate — interminable delay 
while he played with MouraviefF and Ignatieff, and 
finally chose De Witte — and interminable delay 
before they finally left Petersburg. So has passed 
all of June and now July, and the plenipotentiaries 
meet face to face. We have drifted along, living 
with slack interest from day to day ; depressed 
and stupefied almost by two months of saturating 
rain and dampness. Typhoons and the edges of 
typhoons have smothered and drenched us, and 
already there is concern for the rice crop. It 
started badly this year, and I can see that the 
green belt of rice fields around the city is not as 
luxuriant as it was last summer. A few weeks of 
dry, hot weather now in the doyo can save it, they 

say. 

'^:>' ''O "^^ '^^ 

Sunday, August 20th. 

I let my journal lag, during the suspense and 

delay until the peace-makers reached America. 

338 



AFTER THE WAR S39 

And then followed day after day of nothingness — 
nothingness in the cable reports our Kobe paper 
printed. I almost wondered if Vladimir were dis- 
sembling, he seemed so indifferent to the day's news 
that he had always so earnestly discussed. Inci- 
dents went by without ruffling or depressing him. 
Nothing stirred his apathy. Saghalien was taken 
and overrun by Japanese troops, the garrisons 
offering as little resistance as the Baltic fleet ; and 
whole garrisons were brought over to swell the 
total of the Russian army in Japan. "I shall 
never discuss peace until a Russian army is landed 
in Japan," said our most boastful and incompetent 
general — and the army is truly here — seventy 
thousand strong. 

The Black Sea fleet, which proved as worthless 
and undisciplined from admiral down to coal- 
heaver as Von Woerffel had said it was, has mu- 
tinied and held Odessa in a state of siege for a 
week, and the Sevastopol admiral did not dare 
descend upon the Kniaz Potemkin lest his battle- 
ship crew mutiny also, toss him overboard or shoot 
him. The whole mutiny on the Potemkin was so like 
oyera boufe, that Sandy Rathroff laughed, and 
Vladimir and I had to laugh too, as if it were the 
fleet and mutiny of another country. And Tosa- 
buro, our own courteous Tosaburo, when appealed 
to, read and roughly translated the screaming 
farce from the MainichL 



340 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

'*0h, translate that again, please," begged 
Sandy, "that about the ladies with the red para- 
sols promenading on the quarter-deck with the 
Corsair chiefs. Oh ! Delicious ! Delicious ! There 
must be a comic opera of that incident. And then, 
they fled to a Roumanian port and surrendered 
when they had eaten up all the provisions. How 
characteristically Russian ! An army travels on 
its stomach — and so do Revolution and Reform ! 
Oh ! Svohoda! Svohoda! [Liberty ! Liberty !] what 
jokes are perpetrated in thy name!" 

-^^ <:y <:::>' "^y 

Sunday, September 3rd. 

Early this gloomy, suff'ocating, grey Sunday 
morning, we rode to the Dogo side of the chateau 
hill to the garden of a banker, who had some won- 
derful asagaos in bloom. This is the second season 
now that I have seen the great cloches de matin open 
their enchanted corollas in Japan ! Our own gar- 
dener has grown us some beauties this season, has 
ravaged lyo, and sent to Kiushiu and Nagoya for 
precious seeds. At Dairinji they have a flower 
show of their own, and by carrying the pots into 
a dark room, they keep them to enjoy until quite 
late in the day. 

Our banker had put mat-awnings over and 
around his shelves of flower pots, so that even at nine 
o'clock his single cloches were only a little limp. 



AFTER THE WAR S41 

We sat admiring when Tosaburo joined us. "What 
news of the peace ?" we eagerly asked, and our host 
made a gesture and hfted his eyebrows in despair, 
at the reply of no further progress. The deadlock, 
as it seems to be, has lasted these three days, and 
the suspense is as great as for the conclusion of 
any battle. De Witte will not yield territory nor 
pay indemnity, although he at first conceded every 
other point the Japanese demanded, with such 
alacrity that it was apparent that he knew the 
negotiations would fail in the end, and that these 
surrenders would not be held against him. Quite 
as we all prophesied, these first negotiations are to 
fall through, and we must wait and drag on our 
lives, while more defeats bring Nicholas to his 
senses, and a second conference assembles. Then 
more parley and preparation, and nearly a year 
will be gone before we can leave Japan. My hopes 
have undergone so many alternations since the con- 
ference began, that I am dulled and indiiferent. 
As easy to go as to stay ; and now, in this wilting, 
typhoonish weather, after the incessant rains of 
the long hot summer, even the effort of thinking 
about our packing and plans is an exertion, and 
is shirked. 

When we were leaving the garden, Tosaburo 
suggested that we go with him up to the signal 
station on the first terrace of the chateau and get 
a breath of air. Extra coolies pushed our kurumas 



342 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

up the long slope to the first high terrace over- 
looking the city and the far sea. The air was 
motionless, stifling, and so thick and heavy with 
dampness that it was an effort to draw it into the 
lungs. The coolies streamed with perspiration, 
and glistened as if their golden-bronze skins were 
freshly lacquered. 

The banker and Tosaburo talked more intently, 
as they looked out toward the sea — ^toward an in- 
, definite, grey, hazy space between hazier grey hills 
where we knew the sea must be. It was all grey, 
colourless, monotone landscape — no notan, no con- 
trast of black and white, of distinct light and 
shade, no clear silver lights. It was all sodden, 
dull, and leaden-tinted; a bullet-coloured land- 
scape, done in half -defined washes with a big, wet 
brush. 

The banker looked westward and to the south, 
and shook his head in impatience. He asked Tosa- 
buro if any weather report had been given out 
since the first one of the morning, and both went 
over to the old samurai, who was rubbing and 
petting the gun with which he announces exact 
noonday to Matsuyama. The samurai reached 
into his tiny sentry-box and brought Out a paper ; 
the two visitors leaned in and regarded the barome- 
ter, and all three talked earnestly. 

"Another typhoon coming, I suppose," said 
Vladimir. "I must say I am weary of weather. I 



AFTER THE WAR 343 

have been steamed in this typhoon atmosphere 
since early June, and three months of rain and hot 
mist has softened my very bones. Ah ! for the 
bracing dry wind of a desert ! Hot, hot, and dry 
— dry as the sands themselves. One week of Fer- 
ghana, and I should be a giant in strength." 

"Is the typhoon coming this way?" I asked 
Tosaburo. 

"Yes, when it left Formosa, we thought it would 
turn in to the China coast, like the other. But it 
is coming nearer to us now, and will be at Nagasaki 
this afternoon. We shall get it in the night, I 
suppose. Look to your flower-pots to-night, 
Asagao san,'' he said to the banker, who was the 
picture of gloom. 

"We shall have the peace to-night also," said 
Tosaburo, with a fierce smile, as if bracing himself 
to some disaster. "Japan will sign at once. We 
shall yield the indemnity, probably. Our rice 
crop is totally ruined. The bankers will decide the 
day. Our assets are millions less in these hours 
since the glass began falling, and it will not be 
profitable to keep on fighting. We have Sagha- 
lien and Manchuria ; and that will do." His face 
grew rigid, and he smiled the Japanese smile. 

'^Saio de gozarimasu,'' said the banker gravely, 
and left us. 

"And the barometer decides the peace?" asked 
Vladimir wonderingly. 



344 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

"Yes, the barometer, the typhoon, the rice crop, 
and the bankers — thej'^ are all bound together in the 
sum of our national prosperity and riches. It is 
decided. You will have your Christmas in Eng- 
land. All the horios will go home before the chrys- 
anthemums bloom ; and our soldiers will come back 
from Manchuria before the snow flies at Mukden. 
I shall not return to the field with my uncle, as his 
aide." A great sigh, a setting of the jaws, and 
then the Japanese smile, the courageous smile that 
hides grief, sorrow, and disappointment, put a 
mask over his face. 

-"N^ '•^>» "v;^ <:^ 

Sunday, September 10th. 
A chime of gogai bells rang through the streets. 
"Peace ! Peace !" the people cried joyfully again, as 
they sprang upon the bits of pink paper. Very 
quietly, without comment, they went back to their 
mats. There were no Banzais, no fireworks, no 
flags, no lanterns, no rejoicings of any kind. 
Although not official, London despatches said that 
the pact was concluded without De Witte pay- 
ing a sou of the enormous indemnity he was trusted 
to scale down ! And half of Saghalien awarded to 
each country! The London news stood for days 
without denial. Dismay and indignation drove the 
Japanese to sullen speech or gloomy silence; and, 
strange to say, at Dairinji, the Kokaido, Oguri, 



AFTER THE WAR S45 

and in the hospital wards, the Russian officers 
denounced the peace as furiously as they knew 
how, and denounced De Witte more violently still. 
The Cossacks, the riflemen, the Siberians, and 
the sailors cheered, as they did for Togo's victory 
over Rojestvensky — for the same reason — that it 
meant the end of the war and their speedy return 
to Russia ! Vladimir and I wait quietly without 
excitement, for we know that we are soon free to 
go — to Russia? God forbid! To Russia — where 
a terrible era, the fearful awakening of those half- 
civilised ignorant peasants, and those savage, 
brutalised workmen, must now come. From those 
horrors we shrink. In the revolution and the re- 
construction, we cannot take part. Vladimir has 
served his country well, but the tie is almost broken. 

>5j^ /^^ .<;^ .^i;^ 

Monday, October 9th. 

Enviously our brother horios looked upon us, 
believing that Vladimir and I would leave at the 
earliest moment, by grace of Tosaburo's uncle. 
"No, we shall probably be the last to leave," said 
Vladimir. "We are comfortable here, and we 
shall both wait, if we may, to see the sick and 
wounded safely out of the hospital." 

Every one else is impatient, and for them the 
days seem to drag. Poor M — — and his four 
companions, who have been in prison for these 



346 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

months because of their repeated attempts to 
escape, have reappeared, pale, sad, and listless. 
Theirs has been a real imprisonment, thanks 
altogether to their senseless and repeated folly. 

The Americans have sent us their home papers 
to read — nothing is censored or forbidden now — 
and Vladimir has been lost in their hundreds of 
pages. — He reads them all, for such peace-making 
never was before. He shudders and gasps, beats 
the air and beats his brow, and calls me to Hsten 
to this and to that. He calls all the Saints to wit- 
ness that there never was such peace-making be- 
fore. — Peace of the new diplomacy ! Peace of the 
Twentieth Century ! Peace as she is made in 
America ! Peace as she is hammered out at the 
American Cronstadt ! All the traditions are 
broken with. Japan and Russia have not made 
peace — nor wanted it. Oh, no! That terrible 
American President, II Strenuoso, he has made it. 
He wanted it, he would have it. And I believe him 
capable of locking the conferees in a room and 
starving them into obedience. 

No gentle peace was that at Portsmouth. 
Shades of Paul Lessar ! Could you only have lived 
to sit with Vladimir and read this astonishing his- 
tory they have just made in America! What a 
feeble "Iron Wrist" is yours, compared to this 
chilled-steel wrist of this Roosevelt ! 

Vladimir has laughed. He has thrown back his 



AFTER THE WAR S47 

head and roared, as if it were a burlesque or a 
comedy he were enjoying, and not the fate of 
nations in a balance lightly poised — poised until 
the terrible Roosevelt hit the scales with his steel 
wrist and left Serge de Witte dumf ounded with the 
clumsy muddle he had made of it in the beginning. 

But who could have dreamed of such a turn in 
the orderly course of negotiations, as this irruption 
of the American President! Fancy such an inci- 
dent in Europe! Hardly Napoleon ever equalled 
it in high-handedness ! And we can none of us do 
anything nor repudiate it ! Oh, it is the strangest 
thing in all the world! Never more will a peace 
conference go to America. The Americans are too 
hteral. A peace conference is for the purpose of 
making peace, they argue — therefore. Make 
peace! Quick! At tonce! Immediately! Oh! 
sooner than that, even; if the Roosevelt happens 
to be ruling. 

In our heart of hearts not one of us, not a 
Russian nor a Japanese, beheved that peace would 
result from this conference, nor did we want it just 
yet, while reahsing the need of it. Both armies 
in the field protested. Both Emperors yielded to 
Roosevelt's first request, ^for appearance's sake 
only — as a matter of etiquette, to maintain les 
convenances, and pose properly to the world — to 
save face. It was such a well-managed farce, we 
thought, that diplomatic promenade from two ends 



348 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

of the earth to the American Cronstadt. It must 
have been hard to keep straight faces when they 
all entered the council room. 

Serge de Witte yielded everything, knowing 
they would soon reach the impasse and retire — and 
William of Hohenzollern had confused the situa- 
tion hopelessly by his melodramatic meddling and 
— but the unexpected happened. To the amaze- 
ment of all the world, to the horror of all of the old 
school of diplomacy, that terrible M. Roosevelt 
would have none of their non possumus. He tele- 
graphed, he sent messengers and notes ; he haled 
them from their beds at midnight by that last 
invention of the devil, the telephone. Could the 
wires have permitted, he would have helloed in the 
ears of both Emperors — by their baptismal names 
• — tutoyed them orally, as he even did by cable; 
arguing, harping on, and repeating his wish for 
peace, oblivious to denials and rebuffs. 

Oh ! it has been dumfounding. Never was Son 
of Heaven nor our Anointed Autocrat bullied and 
coerced by any outsider like that. Nor would any 
living person have dared to do it save this plain 
Twentieth Century Citizen Roosevelt ! Oh ! Wil- 
liam of Hohenzollern, where are you now.^^ A 
greater one has risen up ! 

Well, this "Steel Wrist" Roosevelt fought for 
peace as knights jousted of old. He struggled 
for peace, as if it were a football on the field. He 



AFTER THE WAR 349 

argued for peace like Maitre Labori for Dreyfus. 
And he won, to the amazement of the world. 
^'Another day's delay," says Vladimir, **and I 
believe that American President capable of burst- 
ing into the council room, knocking their heads 
together, and holding them by their throats until 
they signed a treaty of peace." 

And now, to save us, we cannot see which side he 
has favoured — both claim his favouritism, both re- 
pudiate and revile him. It is all beyond us. We 
wait to meet the diplomatic world in Europe, and 
learn the truth, the inside springs which are known 
only to those of la carriere. 

-<:> <^ ^^ <^ 

Sunday, October 33nd. 

The Russian hospital ship Mongolia will arrive 
next week at Takahama, and I shall be so glad to 
be useful in helping to get my poor patients away. 
They will be taken over to Vladivostok first, and 
then by Red Cross trains to Russia. 

We have had amusing times with the social 
amenities. Vladimir and I have been on good 
terms with all the authorities, and as soon as 
the actual peace gave us an excuse, we had 
a round of dinners for the Japanese officials 
and residents, and the foreign residents who have 
been so uniformly kind to me for all the past 
year. Then the conscience-stricken comman- 



350 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

dant wished to proclaim his cordial intentions, 
and invited all the three hundred and twenty 
Russian officers to a banquet by the sea, and — 
three hundred declined. Donnerwetter! but there 
was wrath at that. Then the American sister of 
charity gave a little dinner, and the higher Rus- 
sians officers went and sat amicably with the Japa- 
nese civil and military officials under the flag of 
Roosevelt, the Peace Angel. Cheered by that, the 
Japanese General took a hand, and invited the 
higher Russian officers to dine. Under stress of 
arguments by Vladimir, Grievsky, and the Ameri- 
can sister, they accepted ; but on the very day of 
the dinner some thirty fell suddenly and grievously 
ill, and civilian worthies filled their places. We 
were incensed beyond words ; for, if the Japanese 
military were willing to part amicably and to strive 
for good feeling, our officers should have responded. 

"He took away the sword that General Nogi 
left me," said one. "He struck me with his sword 
when I was unarmed, at his mercy," said another. 
"He unjustly punished me for the stupidities of 
his interpreter," said another. "But we like the 
Matsuyama townspeople, who have been uniformly 
kind, courteous, and sympathetic to us ; and we 
want to express it to them. What shall we do.f* 
What can we do.^" 

"Go and ask the American sister," said Vladimir. 
In a few minutes they reappeared to tell us that 



AFTER THE WAR 351 

the Red Cross ladies were having a bazaar at a 
tea house garden at Dogo in the afternoon, to raise 
money for some destitute soldiers' families, and 
the American advised them to go there and spend. 

"It is precisely our chance," shouted Esper, 
who posted off with extra coolies to carry the word 
to every officers' mess to go to Dogo, and spend, 
spend, spend, as long as the little Japanese ladies 
had a teacup left. 

It was like a procession out the Dogo road that 
day, and the breloque railway carriages were 
crowded. The garden was jammed, and the little 
women had soon no time to bow to their horio 
acquaintances, so rapidly did the money flow in 
upon them. 

"Five thousand yens ! Five thousand yens !" 
said Madame Takasu, excited beyond all her Japa- 
nese powers of repression, when the money had been 
counted. "And we never dreamed that we should 
make two hundred yens even. What shall we do.? 
What shall we do? It is so wonderful. And all the 
time the Shoko sans [officers] have been giving to 
our poor through the American sister of charity! 
I only know to-day how the Russian officers, in 
gratitude to her, have been contributing all of this 
year to the support of her home for factory girls. 
Ah ! it has been a good fortune to lyo to have you 
Russians here, and to learn your goodness." 



CHAPTER XLII 
SAYONARA! 

Sunday, November 19th. 

OUR hospital ship has come and gone; has 
returned again, and sailed away with the 
last fevered and crippled and ailing Russian. 
The barrack wards are empty, and long rows of 
bedding hang airing in the rich autumn sunshine. 
With the Mongolia came Countess I , Count- 
ess I , Countess B , and others, whom I 

had seen depart from Petersburg on the first Red 
Cross trains. For nearly two years, now, these 
devoted women have been actively working in 
hospitals and on hospital trains. Several of them 
were at Mukden when the great battle began, and 
made their escape with the fleeing army on foot, 
their places in the ambulances given to the wounded 
whom they succoured on the way. Such experi- 
ences as they have gone through surpass all belief, 
and I look upon them with awe, with the reverent 
respect due to beings above and apart from all 
their class and order. All of them show the strain 
of work and war, of horrors, hardships, of suffer- 
ing witnessed and endured ; all of them are aged 

363 



SAYONARA! 353 

and saddened in these terrible months since I saw 
them. They are eager to return to Russia. They 
foresee some terrible years for us all. De Witte 
has launched his reforms ; a constitution and a 
parliament are promised. All Russia has hurled 
itself into a carnival of license and wild excess in 
the name of liberty. The empire is in uproar, 
and no one can foresee the end. 

As the hospital closed its wards, the little Red 
Cross nurses went to their homes, and the officers 
have made each departure an occasion for a dem- 
onstration of friendship and respect. We all 
went to the station to see them oif , and presented 
them with bouquets with inscribed ribbon stream- 
ers, and escorted them on board their ships at 
Takahama. To Vladimir's and Lyov's special 
nurses, Mira and I have sent money gifts that will 
be delivered to them by the post office at their 
homes; and both have the heaviest grey crape 
kimonos, gold obis, and painted neck-pieces that 
Mira could send me from Kioto — a complete 
ceremonial dress for each dear little woman, who 
has worn the nurse's uniform for so long a time. 

And photographs! I have given Vladimir's 
picture in his Red Cross domino, and in his white 
duck clothes, by the dozen — to all the nurses, to 
all our friends and neighbours; and also to all 
Madame Takasu's Httle circle of poets and beauty- 
\7or shippers, with whom Vladimir and I together 



354 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

sat in the castle keep and watched the September 
moon rise clear and golden beyond Dogo's hills — 
the soft, soul-compelling, gentle moon of peace. 

Tosaburo has gone, his temples are empty of 
wistful horios, and the priests are purifying, in 
the hygienic sense. Later come the rites of 
purification by salt and fire, by symbols and long 
Buddhist ceremonies. The hammer of the car- 
penter, tearing down fences, inner partitions, and 
bunks, is as continuous as when they were building 
so hastily last winter for the Port Arthur gar- 
rison. The lyo troops are returning from Man- 
churia, and the shrill Banzais! of the street 
crowds aff'ect me differently than when they went 
with marching regiments going out to the war, 
going to death, and to deal death. 

We are to keep in touch with Tosaburo until the 
last moment, so that I can see his uncle when he 
passes through to a triumph in Tokyo — Vladi- 
mir and I are now going to spend a fortnight in 
Kioto to see the Siemenoffs and their mise en scene. 

Sandy goes with us, Andrew Y having 

secured this privilege and detail from Daniloff. 
We are full of plans, busy with plans ; but in my 
heart I am desolate at leaving, and I cannot look 
around my little home and garden without my 
eyes filling with tears. This has been a home, a 
haven. It has all been for the best. '^Hcec olim 
meminisse juvabit/^ Truly it is so. 



SAYONARA! 355 

Sunday, December 3rd. 

We have seen Kioto; and Lyov, and "the pris- 
oner's bride," in their exquisite chalet on the slope 
of Momojama ; and have watched sunsets together 
from that hilltop whose view could well enchant 
the great Taiko. Some of the SiemenofFs' treas- 
ures we have seen, too, but not all; as many had 
been boxed to make room for the later inflow of 
everything rare and beautiful that the Contessa 
and her scouts could lay hands on. 

And those boxes — where will they go ? Over 
that we have had long discussions, and Lyov's 
future seems an uncertain thing. The old Russia 
will not claim him either, I fear. First, he will 
apply for a long leave before returning for 
retirement; for, with his knee, he can never be a 
dashing dragoon again. The Contessa proposes 
that they go first to America, and stop the winter 
in the Californias, where her mother's brother has 
an orange and olive estate in the south. After 
that.? "We will find you in England, I fancy," 
she says. 

K^^^y '<:;^ "v^ ""s^ 



"I have been everywhere," said Andrew Y- 



"I wanted to see the Japanese in the back prov- 
inces, for I feared that Matsuyama was a trick, 
a show town, and lyo a show province put upon us 



S56 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

— something like those theatrically clean towns in 
Holland, you know. I wanted to catch the peas- 
ants lying in pigstyes, with untidy fields. But, 
no. It is the same everywhere. The same little 
thatched cottages made to order for sketch classes ; 
the same little shrines along good roads ; the same 
neat little geometrical puzzles of tidy rice fields ; 
every valley and every hillside planted to the last 
inch, as far as water can reach; and plantations 
of trees like a model forestry school all over — in 
every province — along the railway — miles away 
from the railway. It is no trick. I give it up. 
As an exhibit, it is hors concours. Put it under 
a glass case, and let me go away and think awhile. 
Maybe I am dreaming, and it is not so different 
from the rest of the world. Maybe all the world 
has come to look like Japan, in these ages that I 
have been here." 

"Yes, and I thought it a trick, too; so I asked 
the head nurse where she lived, and I got leave, and 
went one hundred and forty miles in jinrikisha, 
and on foot, across Shikoku to Tosa province," 

said R . "I stayed in their house — they 

wouldn't let me go to a tea house — and all their 
friends, all the doctors and nurses from far and 
near, came and showed me how charming and 
courteous are the real Japanese people — the non- 
military class, who have not been corrupted by 
Prussian drill. Heretofore, I had only met those 



SAYONARA! 357 

tainted by Germany and its ideals. Now, I believe 
in Bushido.*^ 

<:> 'Qy '^:;:> ^^ 

I went to the Hiogo railway station to see Tosa- 
buro's uncle pass through with the Field Marshal, 
on their way to the triumph in Tokyo. I demurred 
at being present at such a scene, but Tosaburo 
insisted, and said he had already telegraphed 
down to Okayama warning his uncle of my pres- 
ence. "There will be many foreign ladies and 
Japanese ladies there, but my uncle will wish to 
see you, his old friend." 

In the crowded station, I was lost, save for 
Tosaburo, whose glittering full-dress uniform and 
face glowing with patriotic enthusiasm were a 
sight to inspire one. 

And such Banzais! when the train paused in the 
vast Hiogo station ! Enough to lift its arched iron 
roof. All eyes were upon the Field Marshal but 
mine, which sought and found the fine Italian 
countenance, the sharply-cut features, the flashing 
eyes, and the inscrutable smile of my old friend 
the staff colonel — now the Lieutenant-General and 
Chief of Staff — the brain and soul, and moving 
spirit of the Ever Victorious army. Briefly I 
made my thanks to him, and acknowledged my 
deep indebtedness to Tosaburo, my friend of early 
days, my protector of later days ; and, with f elici- 



858 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 

tations on the blessed peace, we parted. I found 
it impossible to convey to Vladimir any conception 
of this living force, this human dynamo, this ani- 
mating spirit that so overpoweringly impresses one 
when in the presence of the outwardly calm, re- 
served, repressed, yet smiling man, who is — the 
world's greatest general! The Twentieth Cen- 
tury God of War. 

•<:;:^ -^^i^ '<;:> '^^ 

December 11th. 
The Siemenoifs and ourselves are returning in- 
dependently at our own expense through America, 
through grace of Daniloff and the home author- 
ities, with long leave for recuperation. Sandy von 
RathrofF, to his great relief, has leave to go via 
America, also. We are making him a little dot 
that will keep him until he finds his footing in the 
New World, where he means to make his "escape," 
as he calls it, from us, and under a new name begin 
the life of an American citizen. Vladimir pleads 
with him to resign in proper form for his family's 
sake; but the boy is obstinate, and his hatred of 
Russia seems to increase daily. He believes in, 
and he gloats over, the reports of riots at Vladi- 
vostok and Harbin, and the hideous happenings 
in Odessa and the south. "Live in such a country.'^ 
Be of such a people ? Never ! Leave this sun- 
shine, this beautiful country and all its chrysan- 



SAYONARA! 859 

themums, for the gloom of Siberian barracks, or 
the town where I lived my years of exile? No! 
No ! No ! Civis Americanus sum/' and the young 
hot-head wraps an imaginary toga around him and 
strides down the deck like Henry Irving. 

I have been reading to Vladimir that favourite 
chapter of his in "Kokoro," where in liquid prose, 
in language as smooth as melted velvet, Lafcadio 
Hearn begins so musically : "Hiogo, this morning, 
lies bathed in a limpid magnificence of light in- 
describable," I look over to the massed roofs of 
Kobe climbing steeply to the green hills beyond, 
out to the soft expanse of pearl sea and the blue 
heavens above; and, without a sound the water 
eddies around the stern, the Awaji shore slips 
around to our starboard side, the Sanuki moun- 
tains rise and recede, and our prison life is ended. 



THE END 



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